IN THE ANCIENT GREEK WORLD, alliances between cities were sometimes a matter of life and death. An army invading a small settlement might only be repelled by assistance from allies, even those a considerable distance away. A drought or breakout of infectious disease could be managed with help from a neighbor. Flourishing Greek cities would establish colonies in promising areas to exploit natural resources, secure new farmland to feed growing populations, and create new markets for their wares. Many such cities maintained deep ties with their founding allies over the centuries.
One of the closest such civic bonds existed between the city of Teos, which was settled around 1000 B.C. by groups from main-land Greece on the western coast of what is now Turkey, and its colony of Abdera, on the Thracian coast of northeastern Greece. According to the fifth-century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus, Abdera was resettled by refugees from Teos, who fled their city in the sixth century B.C. to escape a Persian invasion. It’s unclear how many Teians crossed the Aegean Sea to make their home in this new land. But for the next 300 years, the fortunes of the two cities were deeply intertwined, even as they both came to be ruled by a series of powers including the Achaemenid Persians and the empire of Alexander the Great.
Around 500 b.c., Teos joined an alliance against Persian rule that staged a successful rebellion known as the Ionian Revolt. During one of the major conflicts of that war, the Battle of Lade in 494 b.c., Teos sufered mightily, and the people of Abdera came to the aid of their parent city. The two cities remained
