The people of Thasos, initially built the city port of Neapolis, now called Kavala. In the seventh century before Christ, Neopolis was built to help the people transport pine-wood raw material from the mainland to the island of Thasos, for building the ships of that time.
Searching for a good quality of wood, they also discovered that this area also had gold. The ship builders came to negotiations with the local people and built a city in 360 B.C. The city was called Springs because of the springs that were close by.
When they started to dwell there, cultivating the land around there, they had trouble with the locals, around the town of Springs. So, they invited Phillip II to come and solve the problem. Phillip came, and being a very clever politician, he discovered all about the gold and so he kicked out from the city the people who had found it, the Thasians, and he built the city after his own name, Philippi.
The old city was on the peninsula, still surrounded by the city walls and at the top you see the citadel which is the acropolis of the Ancient Neopolis.
In Philippi, Phillip II minted gold coins which were used by Alexander to start his campaign to Persia. When there was no more gold in the mines Philippi declined into an agricultural little village. It came back onto the stage of history and became very famous at the year 42 BC when outside of the city walls of Philippi was a very famous battle of the Roman civil wars.
At Philippi, the Army of the Republicans led by Cassius and Brutus (who had assassinated Julius Caesar, who had attempted to become an emperor/dictator, two years earlier) met to fight against the Imperial Army led by the successors of Julius Caesar, Octavian and Mark Anthony. Although the Republican Army was more capable, skilled and bigger they were defeated and both Cassius and Brutus committed suicide. The winners of that battle, finally, were the Imperials with their army, Octavian and Mark Anthony.
So the battle of Philippi marks the end of an entire period of Roman history, the Republican Period, and the beginning of a new period, the Imperial Period, something which made this battle extremely important in Roman history. This is the reason why both Octavian and Mark Anthony decided to remodel the City of Philippi, and to give the city (although it was really a village and not a city) all the rights of a Roman colony – to settle their veterans from both the armies and to give to Philippi freedom from taxes. So, Philippi got special privileges, a special political system, which applied directly to Rome.
In the letter of the Apostle Paul to Philippi we find a word related with policy and the political system, mentioned 2 times but is not mentioned in any other book of the New Testament. This word, used by the Apostle πολιτευεστε, means, dealing in a political way (worthy of the Gospel) or our political situation/system (is in heaven.) In Philippians 3:20, Paul is saying, “Philippians, we are proud because you have an exceptional system offered to you by the Romans, but don’t forget that your political system actually is in heaven.” This is the little village that the Apostle Paul visited in the middle of the 1st century AD. There he established the first Christian church on European soil starting his mission west.
Before it came here the gospel was only in Asia.
The City of Philippi was a Christian center and a living city until the 8th century AD. At 8 AD there were earthquakes in the area and the city was ruined completely and abandoned and almost forgotten. Now the main city became the port city of Neopolis and so in the next century, 9 AD, Neopolis became a small Christian center and for the first time the city of Neopolis decided to change the name of their city, which didn’t look very much like the meaning of their name, New City, and to name the city the City of Christ. So, it was called Christopolis, the City of Christ, from 9th century to the 15th century.
In the 15th century the Ottomans came to the city and it became a became major station of their cavalry. The Ottomans came to the city, made a military base – a main station for their cavalry and from the word καβαλάριά, ka-va-la-ri-a, the city was renamed to Kavala, which is its present name. So, Kavala, Christopolis, and the Biblical Neopolis, are the same city.
Minarets are a sign of the mosques. The Muslim population in this area of Kavala is about 100,000 people, which is 1% of the Greek population.
Right after the genocide against the Greeks, in Turkey in 1922, there was an exchange of population between Greece and Turkey. 300,000 Turks from Greece went to Turkey and approximately 2 million Greeks from Asia Minor came to Greece. These people in Kavala decided to make up their own group, among themselves, and to identify themselves as Greek Muslims, not Turks. This is the reason they were not included in that exchange of population by the treaty of Lausanne of 1922.
In the street stands a big aqueduct, Roman style, built 400 years ago (16th century.) It was built by Suleiman the Magnificent, who also built the walls of Jerusalem.
In Kavala there is a church dedicated to St. Nicholas in front of which is a monument with a mosaic commemorating the coming of the Apostle Paul to Kavala. On the mosaic the Macedonians are calling the Apostle Paul from Asia, from Troas to Europe. The mosaic shows the Apostle Paul coming out of his boat and stepping to the front of Neapolis. (Acts 16:11)
We are Christians today in the west because one day in the middle of the 1st century AD in this port of Kavala a ship came bringing a person holding some scrolls and the scrolls were the New Testament, the message of the gospel. Kavala, Greece is the gate of the gospel for all the western world.
We departed from Neoplois to go to Drama, another city close to Kavala, where we had a performance.
Soon we would learn more about the Macedonian calling, the mission of the Apostle Paul to the west.