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Drama

The first residents of the area created a settlement dating back to 5000 BC in one of the town's neighbourhoods. In later times the worship of Dionysus makes a landmark in an almost forgotten history. Dionysus was the God of wine, fun and theatre. The Drama plains still produce some of the finest Greek wines. A lot of different tribes, peoples, and nations passed and added their own ingredients to the soup; Thracians, Macedonians (Hellenes), Romans, Byzantines, Jews, Franks, Ottomans. Drama was also the capital of a greater province during the Roman and Ottoman rule. Dramalis, actually Mahmud Dramali pasha, an Ottoman local ruler started a campaign to stop the Greek Revolution in the south, but was defeated (thankfully).

Historical evidence and archaeological finds point to the existence of Greek-speaking inhabitants of the North Pindus mountains in the period 2200-2100 B.C. These Protohellenic tribes are thought to have broken away from the main bulk of the family of Indo-European peoples in the course of the 5th millennium B.C. and to have spread throughout the area known today as Northern Greece-Drama. In the early centuries of the second millennium B.C. three basic groups of Greek-speaking peoples can be distinguished: a) the South-Eastern group (in the NW part of Thessaly), whose principal representatives were the Ionians, b) the Eastern group (W. Macedonia), with two dialect subgroups, the Arcadian and the Aeolian and c) the Western group, of which the tribe of the Makedoni was the most populated.

Macedonia continued to be a Greek-land under the Epigoni (the successors of Alexander the Great) and for some two centuries was the core of larger state units ruled by Macedonian kings. It was only after the decisive battle of Pydna in 168 B.C. that Macedonia ceased to exist as an independent state and came under Roman domination. Its territories were divided into four semi-autonomous regions.

Despite Roman rule, the Macedonian provinces prospered, and attracted new colonists from the East and from Italy. For the first time, Jewish communities appeared. However, as can be seen from the inscriptions, the Roman colonists were gradually Hellenised.

During the 3rd century A.D. there were successive invasions of Goths and other tribes related to them, but these attacks were beaten off and did not lead to ethnological adulteration. In 324 A.D., Byzantium became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. This had a positive effect on the further development of Macedonia and particularly on that of its capital, Thessaloniki, which soon grew to the point where it was regarded as the second most important city in the Byzantine Empire.

With the exception of some enclaves of Latin-speaking and other peoples, the fundamentally Greek population of Macedonia remained effectively unchanged until the 7th century A.D., when various Slav races (Drogovites, Strumonites, Sagoudates, and others) began to settle in the area of Macedonia. With the permission of the Byzantine authorities, these tribes formed small Slavic enclaves known to the Byzantines as 'Sclavineae'. Throughout the 7th century the Slavs fought the Byzantines and made repeated attacks on Thessaloniki, though without success. In 688 Justinian II won a decisive victory over them, and forcibly removed many of them to Bithynia in Asia Minor. For a long time the Slavs lived peacefully in the European provinces of the Byzantine Empire and, as can be seen from Byzantine writers, many of them were Hellenised.

During the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century the people of Drama, most of them Christians and of Greek origin, took active role in the Macedonian Struggle in order to gain their freedom and to unite with the free modern Hellenic State. It took almost 10 years, but at the end of the Second Balcan War Drama was liberated by the Hellenic Army (July 1, 1913).

Drama is thought to occupy the site of an Edonian town called Drabeskos by Thucydides (I, 100), where the Athenians in 465 BC were cut to pieces in their first and unsuccessful attempt to colonise Amphipolis. The Edonians, a Thracian people who dwelt between the Strymon and the Nestos, were notorious for their orgiastic worship of Dionysos. Drama was of some importance in the late-Byzantine era. Boniface de Montferrat fortified the town in 1205 and here in 1317 died Irene de Montferrat, second wife of Andronikos II. The Turks occupied it in 1371.

In the 14th. Century, Drama was briefly raised to the status of metropolitan, only to be incorporated with Serres. In 1619, Philippi (which already included Kavala) was transferred to Drama, the metropolitan taking the dual title 'Philippi and Drama.' In 1924 it was divided, the title of Philippi passing to Kavala.

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