Ozolian Locris
Ozolian Locris (
.Name
Various etymologies were proposed by the ancients about the origin of the name of the region's inhabitants, the Ozolai (Ὀζόλαι). Some derived it from the Greek verb ὄζειν (ozein) which means "to smell". According to
- (a) that the exhalations of a river had a peculiar smell and
- (b) that the first dwellers of the region did not know how to weave garments, so they wore untanned skins which were smelly.
Another version mentioned by Pausanias was that Orestheus, son of Deucalion, king of the land, had a bitch which gave birth to a stick instead of a puppy and Orestheus buried it from which a vine grew in the spring, and from its branches called ὄζοι (ozoi) in Greek, the people got their name.[3]
Geography
Ozolian Locris is mountainous and for the most part unproductive. The declivities of
The chief town of the Ozolians was
.History
They first appear in history in the time of the Peloponnesian War, when they are mentioned by Thucydides as a semi-barbarous nation, along with the Aetolians and Acarnanians, whom they resembled in their armour and mode of fighting.[4] In 426 BCE, the Locrians promised to assist Demosthenes, the Athenian commander, in his invasion of Aetolia; but, after the defeat of Demosthenes, most of the Locrian tribes submitted without opposition to Spartan Eurylochus, who marched through their territory from Delphi to Naupactus.[5] They belonged at a later period to the Aetolian League.[6]
See also
Notes
- Geographica, Book IX, onlineat Perseus
- ^ Plutarch, Moralia, Book IV, Quaestiones Graecae
- ^ a b Pausanias, 10.38.1.
- ^ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.5.3 (pp. 10, 11).
- ^ Thuc. iii. 95, seq.
- ^ Polyb. xviii. 30.
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1854–1857). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray.
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- On the geography of the Locrian tribes, see Leake, Northern Greece, vol. ii. pp. 66, seq., 170, seq., 587, seq.