It was probably a colony of Andros founded at the beginning of the 7th century BC. Together with Apollonia it was considered the largest polis in the region of Olynthus, in Chalcidice, in the northern Aegean, according to Xenophon in 382 BC. The acropolis lay on a hill overlooking the sea and the cemetery. Not much has been found on the acropolis: remains of walls and of a tower or gate, remains of a probably Classical temple, a Hellenistic prytaneion – in other words, fragments of different structures of different dates. In the cemetery, which covered an area of 60 km², more than 9,000 tombs have been identified, spanning the period from the late 7th century BC to the 3rd century AD, though most were of the Classical period.