Ἀκή

Ake, Acre

Translated by Robert Dyer4 Mar 2000Vetting: high14 revisions

2 notes · 30 words

A city in Phoenicia, which some say¹ is the old name for the one now called Ptolemais, though Demetrius [says this] not of the [whole] city but of its acropolis.²

Greek original · Adler’s text

Ἀκή· πόλις ἐν Φοινίκῃ, ἣν οἱ μὲν τὴν νῦν Πτολεμαΐδα καλουμένην οὕτω πάλαι φησὶν ὀνομάζεσθαι, Δημήτριος δὲ οὐ τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ταύτης ἀκρόπολιν.

Notes (2)

Abridged from Harpocration s.v. See below, n.1.

1Manuscript variants have this "say" in both singular and plural; Adler oddly chose to print the singular. Harpocration not only has the plural but names a plurality of authorities -- Nicanor and Callimachus -- who said this. [Harpocration's entry itself gives Demosthenes 52 as the principal citation for Ake. The toponym does not appear in the transmitted text of the speech, but Valesius (Henri de Valois, 1603-1676) recognised that 52.20 could/should be emended from ei)s *Qra/|khn to ei)s *)/Akhn (see web address 1). For another emendation which provides a mention of Ake in one of the Attic orators see Isaeus 4.7, with Valckenaer's e)c *)Akh=s for e(ca/kis; and for the same in another genre Philo Mechanicus, Poliorketika B53 Diels-Schramm [90.16 Th.], with Buecheler's *)/Akhs for a)kti/s.] ↩

2The hellenistic antiquarian Demetrius of Scepsis (on whom see generally OCD(4) p.433, s.v. "Demetrius(12)"). Here he probably implies that only the headland fortress was still called Ake in later times, while the residential city became Ptolemais.
This ancient Phoenician headland city 'Akka (Akkadian Akk?Akka) was visited by Assyrian conquerors about 700 B.C., was the Persian staging-point for their invasion of Egypt, and became part of Alexander's empire in 332 and of Ptolemaic Egypt, being renamed Ptolemais (RE XXIII 2.1883-6, Ptolemais [9], cf. I 1.162 Ake), to be distinguished from the Ptolemais in Egypt. The crusaders knew it as St. Jean d'Acre, or simply Acre. Today as Akko (Septuagint *)akxw/) it is a multicultural city of about 50,000 in Israel, on the northern promontory of the Bay of Haifa. Ptolemais was an important hellenistic city, visited by Paul (Acts 21.7). The Roman emperor Claudius founded a colony of Roman veterans there; always hostile to Hasmonean Judaism the Greeks massacred many Jews in 66, and in 67 Vespasian mustered his troops there for the invasion of Galilee (see OCD). By 190 A.D. it was the seat of a suffragan Christian bishop. It fell to the Arabs in 638, was captured by Baudouin I in 1104 and renamed St.Jean d'Acre. In 1187 Saladin captured it, but it was retaken by Richard the Lionheart in 1191. The Mamelouks gained control from 1291 to their fall to the Turks in 1517. It resisted Napoleon in 1799. Captured by the British in 1918, it remained in British Palestine until 1948, when it was captured by the Israeli army, to be incorporated in Israel.
Demosthenes (52.20), Strabo (16.2.25-26), Stephanus of Byzantium (Ethnica 59.11, 538.7) and Harpocration s.v. all accentuate the name on the first syllable, *)/akh, but this may be a confusion with the Arcadian city of that name mentioned by Pausanias in the wanderings of Orestes (8.34.2) and clearly in the neuter plural.

Ἀκή

Greek original · Adler’s text

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Ἀκή

Greek original · Adler’s text

Notes (2)

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Greek original · Adler’s text

Translation

Greek original · Adler’s text

Notes (2)

External resources

Neighbouring entries