AMPHIPOLIS ("Αμφίπολις"). – A city of eastern Macedonia (today the village of Neokhorì [on]), about 5 km from the Aegean Sea, on the river Strymon (today Struma), which surrounds it on two sides: hence the name of the river-girt city. Because of its strategic importance it was called "Εννέα δόξα" and the nine roads. Contested in the wars of the 5th and 4th centuries BC (Herodotus, VII, 114; Thucydides, I, 100; IV, 102 ff.; Demosthenes often in Olynth., Philipp. and other speeches), it was an Athenian colony from 437 BC, Spartan from 424, Macedonian from 346; then, under the Romans, capital of "Macedonia prima" and traversed by the Via Egnatia. It was the birthplace of the critic Zoilus and an important numismatic centre: its earliest coins date to 422-21 BC.
St Paul passed through A. and Apollonia (q.v.) on his way with Silas from Philippi to Thessalonica, apparently in the year AD 51 (Acts 17, 1).
We do not know whether the Christian community of A. dates from St Paul. A native of A. was St Mocius, a priest and martyr under Diocletian, and the holy martyrs (date unknown) Auctus, Taurius and Thessalonike. In the Byzantine age it is called Chrysopolis (not Christopolis, corresponding to Neapolis or Kavalla) and was an episcopal see; but only two of its bishops (Andrew, at the Council in Trullo, 692, and an anonymous one mentioned by St Theodore the Studite, 808) are known with certainty.