Samothrace

Samothrace, an island of the Ægean Sea, lies in the north-east corner, nearly opposite the mouth of the river Maritza and 40 miles NW. of the Dardanelles. Next to Mount Athos it is the most conspicuous object in the northern Ægean, rising to 5248 feet in Mount Sacoce (Phengari), which occupies nearly the whole of its surface (68 sq. m.). It was from this peak that Poseidon watched the fights on Troy plain (Il. xiii.). Bare and repellent, the island possesses no harbour and only one village, Chora, of 2000 inhabitants, and is the meeting-place of the Ægean storms. In ancient times it was celebrated for the worship of the Cabeiri (q.v.), mysterious divinities of (probably) Pelasgo-Phœnician origin, and was one of the most sacred sites in the Ægean. The temples and subsidiary buildings forming the sanctuary of these deities were excavated in 1873–75 by Professor Couze (see his Archäologische Untersuchungen auf Samothrake (1875 and 1880). Parts of the cyclopean walls of the ancient city still remain. For several centuries the island belonged to the Byzantine empire; but in 1355 it was given to the princely merchant family of the Gatilusi. They kept it until it was conquered in 1457 by the Turks, who then, and again in 1821, nearly exterminated the population. See Tozer, Islands of the Ægean (1890).