History
Stone anchors in the local archeological museum suggest that traders from the Aegean visited Sozopol harbour as early as the twelfth century BC, although the identity of these early seafarers remains the subject of much conjecture. More certain is the town's status as the first of the Greek colonies along the coast, founded around 610 BC by a party of adventurers from Miletus, who included in their number the philosopher Anaximander, who is credited with making the first world map (now lost) and being the first theoretical astronomer - his speculations on the nature of the universe, incluing the then revolutionary notion that the earth floats free and unsupported in space, formed the basis of modern cosmology. The Greeks named the town Apollonia Pontica after Apollo, the patron of seafarers and colonizers, and prospered by trading Greek textiles and wine for Thracian honey, grain and copper. Apollonia's major customer was Athens, and the decline of the latter in the fourth century BC ended the town's brief reign as a minor maritime power. Having spent several centuries existing quite happily on the fringes of more powerful Thracian and Macedonian states, the Apollonians flirted with various anti-Roman alliances in the first century BC in order to try and stave off the inevitable advance of Latin power. In 72 BC, their attachment to the Black Sea empire-builder Mithridates of Pontus was punished by the Roman general Marcus Lucullus, who sacked the town and carried off the treasured statue of Apollo that had graced its harbour. Apollonia disappeared from the records of chroniclers during the latter stages of the Roman Empire, re-emerging in 431 as Sozopolis , the "City of Salvation". Under the Byzantines the town soon developed a reputation for the good life, and rebellious nobles and troublesome bishops were "retired" here by emperors unwilling to see their peers too harshly punished. However, marauding armies returned during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and following the Turkish invasion Sozopol sank into anonymity, replaced by Burgas as the area's major port.
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