Enez

The mythical and eponymous founder of the ancient Greek city of Ainos/Aenus was said to be Aeneus, a son of the god Apollo and father of Cyzicus. Another mythical ruler, named Poltys, son of Poseidon, entertained Heracles when he came to Aenus. On that occasion, Heracles slew Poltys' insolent brother Sarpedon on the beach of Aenus. According to Strabo, Sarpedon is the name of the coastline near Aenus, so both Poltys and Sarpedon would appear to be eponyms.

The Suda writes that the first settlers were Greeks from the Alopeconnesus and later more settlers came from Mytilene and Kyme.[3] Harpocration, writes the same.[4]

Pseudo-Scymnus write that the city had Aiolian settlers from Mytilene.[5]

Presumably because of the similarity of the names, Virgil has Aeneas found the city after the destruction of Troy.[6] A surer sign of its antiquity is in the Iliad, where Homer mentions that Peirous, who led Troy's Thracian allies, came from Aenus.[7]

Herodotus (7.58) and Thucydides[8] say Aenus was an Aeolian colony. Scymnus Chius (696) says the colonists came from Mytilene on Lesbos Island, while Stephanus Byzantius says they came (also?) from Cumae.[9] According to Strabo (p. 319), a more ancient name of the place was Poltyobria and Stephanus says it was also called Apsinthus.[9]

As a subject ally of Athens, Aenus provided peltasts at the Battle of Sphacteria in 425 BC and sent forces to the Sicilian Expedition in 415.[2]

During the Hellenistic period Ainos changed hands multiple times. After a spell of Macedonian rule, the city passed to Lysimachos of Thrace after the death of Alexander the Great, and was subsequently taken by the Seleucid Empire after his defeat and death at the Battle of Corupedium in 281 BC. It then became a possession of the Ptolemaic Kingdom , when it was captured as a result of the Third Syrian War around 246 BC, it was subsequently captured by Philip V of Macedon in 200 BC, and later of Antiochus the Great, who lost it to the Romans in 185 BC, whereupon the Romans declared Aenus a free city. It was still a free city in the time of Pliny the Elder.[2][9]

The city is mentioned first among the cities of the province Rhodope in the 6th-century Synecdemus of Hierocles.[10] Under Justinian I (r. 527–565), the city wall was heightened and the previously unprotected shore fortified.[10] In the middle Byzantine period, the city was part of the Theme of Thrace.[10] In 1091, in the nearby hamlet of Lebounion, Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) and his Cuman allies dealt a crushing defeat on the Pechenegs.[10] In 1189, the town was plundered by soldiers of the Third Crusade under Duke Frederick of Swabia, with the inhabitants fleeing by ship.[10] In the Partitio Romaniae of 1204, the city is attested as a distinct district (catepanikium de Eno). Under Latin rule, it was the seat of a Catholic bishop (a suffragan of Trajanopolis), while in a document of 1219 the Crusader barons Balduin de Aino and Goffred de Mairi are mentioned as lords of the city.[10] In 1237 a Cuman raid reached the city, and in 1294 it was besieged by the Bulgarians under Constantine Tikh and his Tatar allies until the Byzantines released Sultan Kaykawus II.[10] In June 1265 Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos granted the Venetians the right to settle and trade in the city.[10]

In 1347, John Palaiologos, Marquess of Montferrat, planned to take over the city.[10] In 1351, John V Palaiologos demanded possession of Ainos from the senior emperor John VI Kantakouzenos.[10] In the ensuing civil war, Palaiologos signed a treaty with Venice there on 10 October 1352, securing financial assistance in exchange for ceding the island of Tenedos as collateral.[10] After Palaiologos' Serbian and Bulgarian allies were defeated by Kantakouzenos' Ottoman allies, Ainos was captured by the Kantakouzenos loyalists and was placed under the rule of the exiled ruler of Epirus, Nikephoros II Orsini.[11] Following the death of the Serbian emperor Stephen Dushan and his governor of Thessaly, Preljub, in 1355, however, Nikephoros abandoned the city and sailed to Thessaly to claim his ancestral inheritance. His admiral Limpidarios took over control of the city in his absence, despite the opposition of Nikephoros' wife Maria Kantakouzene (daughter of John VI). Maria locked herself in the city's citadel and continued to resist for a while, before agreeing to depart.[12]

With the gradual Ottoman conquest of Thrace in the 1360s and 1370s, the city became a haven for the Greek population.[12] From ca. 1384 on the city came under the rule of the Genoese Gattilusio family, beginning with Niccolo Gattilusio. The Gattilusi maintained their possession by exploiting the city's wealth, chiefly deriving from the area's salt pans and fisheries, and sending an annual tribute to the Ottomans. Niccolo Gattilusio was deposed by his son Palamede in 1408/9, who ruled until his death in 1454. His younger son, Dorino II, squabbled with Helena Notaras, the widow of Niccolo's elder son Giorgio Gattilusio and ruled only for two years. Helena Notaras appealed to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II who attacked the city from land and sea and forced its surrender in January 1456.[12][13]

In 1463 Ainos was given by Mehmed II to the deposed Despot of the Morea, Demetrios Palaiologos, as an appanage (along with parts of Thasos and Samothrace). He remained in possession of the town until 1467, when he fell into disgrace.[12][14] The Venetians briefly captured the city in 1469.[12]

The town gave its name to the Enos-Midia line, which briefly marked the border of the Ottoman Empire in Europe in the disastrous aftermath of the First Balkan War. The border was shifted further northwest after the Turks made some limited gains in the Second Balkan War, recapturing the city of Edirne. Enez however remains the westernmost Turkish town on the European continent (excluding Imbros which is an island); the town of Alexandroupoli (Dedeağaç) lies across the border with Greece. However, the two towns have no direct access to each other due to the presence of a swampland reserve between them. To get around the swampland, it takes about 1.5 hours to make the journey to a border crossing some kilometres to the north and into Greece before reaching Alexandroupoli.