Brea (Thrace)

Brea was an Athenian colony founded around 446 or 445 BC in the historical region of Thrace, its exact site unknown but proposed either in Bisaltia along the lower Strymon river or in Chalcidice a few miles south of Nea Syllata, in what is now Greece. It is known chiefly through the surviving Brea Decree, an inscribed stone recording the colonization terms Athens set and its strategy for securing the resource rich Strymon region. The historian Plutarch describes the colony as serving both to resettle Athenian citizens and to extend Athenian power in Thrace. The settlement likely did not last long, possibly destroyed by neighboring Thracians soon after its founding.