Cichyrus
39°14′33″N 20°31′53″E / 39.242391°N 20.53143°E
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Cichyrus (
BC by colonists most probably from Chaonia and the west Peloponnese region. The city is about 800 m north of the junction of the Kokytos River with the Acheron, and about 4.5 km east of the bay of Ammoudia. Near it was the outlet into the sea of the Acherusian Lake. Strabo (7.7.5) gives the same information and adds that in his time Ephyra was called Kichyros. The name had been changed from Ephyra back to the more ancient name about 200 years earlier.[3]
Mythology
In
Perithoos came to snatch away Persephone, wife of Aidoneus, King of Ephyra. These were none other than Persephone and Hades, the gods of the underworld, who had a shrine and an oracle at Ephyra.[5] Heracles subjugated Ephyra and fathered a child by Princess Astyoche, Tlepolemus, who became king of Rhodes.[6] Thyestes came there looking for his brother, Atreus. Atreus was not there, but the daughter of Thyestes, Pelopia, was there, and Thyestes, not recognizing her, took her as a wife. Their union produced Aegisthus.[7]
History
The
Peirithous were thrown into chains by Aidoneus; and its celebrity in the most ancient times may also be inferred from a passage of Pindar.[11]
Information on the location
The site of Ephyra is confirmed by the excavation of the ancient oracle of the dead,
BC, (Dem. 7.32) and their subjection to the Thesprotians, Ephyra appears to have reverted to its original name, Kichyros, which had been kept alive in some neighboring Thesprotian settlement.[12]
Some finds, chiefly pottery of the 1st century BC, confirm the statement of Pausanias (1.17.5) that Kichyros was in existence in his time.
Archaeology
The remains of the ancient Ephira are near the present
Cyclopean style in the fourteenth or early thirteenth century BC, while the third is much later, of the Hellenistic period. On the other hand, on a plateau on the western side of the acropolis, three large funerary burial mounds of the 12th century BC have been found.[13]
See also
References
Citations
- ^ Strabo. Geographica. Vol. vii, p. 324. Page numbers refer to those of Isaac Casaubon's edition.
- ^ For a map of this region in northwestern Greece, see map 20 in Pedro Olalla's Mythological Atlas of Greece (Athens: Road Editions, 2002).
- ^ Olalla, op.cit. p. 39.
- Ephyra (Thessaly), not the Thesprotian town. Strabo. Geographica. Vol. ix, p. 442. Page numbers refer to those of Isaac Casaubon's edition.
- ^ Pausanias 1.17.4-5, 9.36.3; Plut. Theseus 31.35.
- ^ Olalla, op.cit., p. 161.
- ^ Olalla, op.cit. p. 89.
- ^ Pausanias ix. 36.3.
- ^ Homer. Iliad, ii.659, xv.531.
- ^ Strabo vii. p. 328,; comp. viii. p. 338.
- ^ Pausanias i.17.4; Pind. Nem. vii.55.; William Martin Leake, Northern Greece, vol. iii. p. 7, vol. iv. pp. 53, 175.
- ^ Kichyros, the former Ephyra: Strabo 7.7.5, 8.3.5.
- ^ = 19870 Page of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Greece: Ephyra (in Greek)
Sources
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1854–1857). "Ephyra". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray.