Abantes. Peoples of Thrace [1] who passed into Greece, built Abae which Xerxes destroyed, [2] and withdrew from there to the isle of Negroponte, [3] which they named Abantide.

1. In Antiquity, Thrace encompassed territory that now lies in northeastern Greece, southeastern Bulgaria, and the European part of Turkey. The area was also called Europe, a term whose application grew to encompass the entire continent. The name Thrace comes from a populous group of Indo-European tribes, the Thracians , whose first historical record is a mention in the Iliad ; their origins remain obscure. Orpheus was said to be a Thracian king; Spartacus was a Thracian; and so were several Roman emperors and Eastern Roman emperors. The Persians subjugated the Thracians and made them participate in Xerxes’s invasion of Greece in 480 BCE.

2. In 480 BCE, by fire. Abae possessed a widely consulted temple and oracle of Apollo.

3. Negroponte is the name acquired in the 13th century (and lasting into the 19th century) by the Greek island of Euboea. The island is about the length of Long Island and lies just off the eastern coast of Greece—off Boeotia, to be precise. The name Negroponte is the product of Italian folk etymology, the ponte or bridge being the bridge at Chalcis, the narrowest point of the Euripos strait, which was first spanned by a bridge in 410 BCE. (It was from near this point that the Hellenic expedition against Troy is supposed to have set out.) Negroponte was also called Egripons, Negripo, and Negropont, in English; Diderot spells the word Negrepont, without an accent ; the spellings Négrepont and Nègrepont are also used in French.