Abdera

Abdera, a town which stood on the south coast of ancient Thracia, to the east of the river Nestus. Colonised by the inhabitants of Teos in 541 B.C., it afterwards came under the power of Athens, and was a free town under the Romans. Although the birthplace of such distinguished men as the philosophers Democritus, Protagoras, Anaxarchus, and the historian Hecataeus, Abdera was the Gotham of antiquity, and Abderite a proverbial name for a simpleton.