Abdera is a town which stood on the south coast of ancient Thracia, to the east of the river Nestus. Colonized by the inhabitants of Teos in 541 BC, it later came under the power of Athens, and was a free town under the Romans. Although the birthplace of such distinguished men as the philosophers Democritus, Protagoras, and Anaxarchus, and the historian Hecataeus, Abdera was the Gotham of antiquity, and "Abderite" was a proverbial name for a simpleton.