The Aegean Sea is part of the Mediterranean Sea. It is located between Greece on the west and north and Turkey on the east. The large island of Crete marks its southern boundary. To the northeast, the Aegean connects to the Black Sea through the Strait of Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara.
The Aegean Sea is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) wide and 400 miles (640 kilometers) long and has hundreds of islands, including Lesbos and Patmos (Revelation 1:9). The sea was probably named after Aegeus, a king of Athens and the father of Theseus in Greek mythology.
The apostle Paul spent a lot of time in the Aegean area during his second and third missionary journeys. The three major modern cities on the Aegean are Athens (with its port of Piraeus), Thessaloniki (biblical Thessalonica) in Greece, and Izmir (biblical Smyrna) in Turkey.