[21] Thucyd. iv, 105; Marcellinus, Vit. Thucyd. c. 19. See Rotscher, Leben des Thukydides, ch. i, 4, p. 96, who gives a genealogy of Thucydidês, as far as it can be made out with any probability. The historian was connected by blood with Miltiadês and Kimon, as well as with Olorus, king of one of the Thracian tribes, whose daughter Hegesipylê was wife of Miltiadês, the conqueror of Marathon. In this manner, therefore, he belonged to one of the ancient heroic families of Athens, and even of Greece, being an Ækid through Ajax and Philæus (Marcellin. c. 2).
The colony under Agnon, despatched from Athens in the year 437 B.C., appears to have been both numerous and well sustained, inasmuch as it conquered and maintained the valuable position of Ennea Hodoi in spite of those formidable Edonian neighbors who had baffled the two preceding attempts. Its name of Ennea Hodoi was exchanged for that of Amphipolis,—the hill on which the new town was situated being bounded on three sides by the river. The settlers seem to have been of mixed extraction, comprising no large proportion of Athenians: some were of Chalkidic race, others came from Argilus, a Grecian city colonized from Andros, which possessed the territory on the western bank of the Strymon, immediately opposite to Amphipolis,[22] and which was included among the subject allies of Athens. Amphipolis, connected with the sea by the Strymon and the port of Eion, became the most important of all the Athenian dependencies in reference to Thrace and Macedonia.