Volume 1

A dictionary of Greek and Roman geography / by various writers ; edited by William Smith.

Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dictionary of Greek and Roman geography / by various writers ; edited by William Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Aetolia, and Acarnania. Their interpretation is con- firmed by a passage in Tacitus, in which Nicopolis in the south of Epeirus is called by Tacitus {Ann. ii. 53) a city of Achaia; but too much stress must not be laid upon this passage, as Tacitus may only have used Achaia in its widest signification as equivalent to Greece. If jae'xpt is not inclusive, Thessaly, Aetolia, and Acarnania must be assigned either wholly to Macedonia, or partly to Macedonia and partly to Epeirus. Ptolemy (iii. 2, seq.), in his division of Greece, assigns Thessaly to Mace- donia, Acarnania to Epeirus, and Aetolia to Achaia; and it is probable that this represents the political division of the country at the time at which he lived (a.d. 150). Achaia continued to be a Eoman pro- vince governed by proconsuls down to the time of Justinian. (Kruse, Hellas, vol. i. p. 573.) ACHA'EACA (’Axapa/ca), a village of Lydia, on the road from Tralles to Nysa, with a Plutonium or a temple of Pluto, and a cave, named Charonium, where the sick were healed under the direction of the priests. (Strab. xiv. pp. 649, 650.) ACHAENAE {’Axapuai: JSth.'Axapt'^vs,Achar~ nanus, Nep. Them. 1.; Adj. ’Axo.pviKus'), the prin- cipal demus of Attica, belonging to the tribe Oeneis, w’as situated 60 stadia N. of Athens, and conse- quently not far from the foot of Mt. Pames. It was from the woods of this mountain that the Achar- nians were enabled to carry on that traffic in char- coal for which they were noted among the Athenians. (Aristoph. Acharn. 332.) Their land was fertile ; their population was rough and warlike; and they furnished at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war 3000 hoplites, or a tenth of the whole infantry of the republic. They possessed sanctuaries or altars of Apollo Aguieus, of Heracles, of Athena Hygieia, of Athena Hippia, of Dionysus Melporaenus, and of Dionysus Cissus, so called, because the Achamians said that the ivy first grew in this demus. One of the plays of Aristophanes bears the name of the Achamians. Leake supposes that branch of the plain of Athens, which is included between the foot of the hills of Khassid and a projection of the range of Aegaleos, stretching east- ward from the northern termination of that moun- tain, to have been the district of the demus Achaniae. The exact situation of the town has not yet been discovered. Some Hellenic remains, situated f of a mile to the westward of Menidhi, have generally been taken for those of Archamae ; but Menidhi is more probably a corruption of naiouiSai. (Thuc. ii. 13, 19—21; Lucian, Icaro-Menip. 18; Pind. Nem. ii. 25 ; Pans. i. 31. § 6 ; Athen. p. 234 ; Steph. B. s. V. ; Leake, Demi of Attica, p. 35, seq.) ACHAEEAE, a town of Thessaly in the district Thessaliotis, on the river Pamisus, mentioned only by Livy (xxxii. 13), but apparently the same place as the Acharae of Pliny (iv. 9. s. 16). ACHA'TES (’AxoTrjs), a small river in Sicily, noticed by Silius Itahcus for the remarkable clear- ness of its waters (^perlucentem splendenti gurgite Achaten, xiv. 228), and by various other writers as the place where agates were found, and from whence they derived the name of “ lapis Achates,” which they have retained in all modem languages. It has been identified by Cluverius (followed by most mo- dem geographers) with the river Dirillo, a small stream on the S. coast of Sicily, about 7 miles E. of Terranova, which is indeed remarkable for the clear- ness of its waters: but Pliny, the only author who affords any clue to its position, distinctly places the Achates between Thei-mae and Selinus, in the SW. quarter of the island. It cannot, therefore, be the Dirillo, but its modem name is unknown. (Plin. iii. 8. s. 14, xxxvii. 10. s. 54 ; Theophrast. de Lapid. § 31; Vib. Seq. p. 3; Solin. 5. § 25; Cluver. Sicil. p. 201.) [E.H.B.] ACHELO'US (’AxeAwos, Epic ’AxeA.coibs). 1. (^Aspropotamo'), the largest and most celebrated river in Greece, rose in Mount Pindus, and after flowing through the mountainous country of the Dolopians and Agraeans, entered the plain of Acarnania and Aetolia near Stratus, and discharged itself into the Ionian sea, near the Acamanian town of Oeniadae. It subsequently formed the boundary between Acarnania and Aetolia, but in the time of Thucydides the territory of Oeniadae extended east of the river. It is usually called a river of Acarnania, but it is sometimes assigned to Aetolia. Its general direction is from north to south. Its waters are of a whitish yellow or cream colour, whence it derives its modern name of Aspro- potamo or the White river, and to which Dionysius (432) probably alludes in the epithet apyvpoSiv7]9. It is said to have been called more anciently Thoas, Axenus and Thestius (Thuc. ii. 102; Strab. pp. 449, 450, 458; Plut. de Fluv. 22; Steph. B. s. v.) We learn from Leake that the reputed sources of the Achelous are at a village called Khaliki, which is probably a corraption of Chalcis, at which place Dionysius Periegetes (496) places the sources of the river. Its waters are swelled by numerous torrents, which it receives in its passage through the mountains, and when it emerges into the plain near Stratus its bed is not less than three-quarters of a mile in width. In winter the entire bed is often filled, but in the middle of summer the river is divided into five or six rapid streams, of which only two are of a considerable size. After leaving Stratus the river becomes naiTower; and, in the lower part of its course, the plain through which it flows was called in antiquity Paracheloitis after the river. This plain was celebrated for its fertility, though covered in great part with marshes, several of which were formed by the overflowings of the Achelous. In this part of its course the river presents the most extraordinary series of wander- ings; and these deflexions, observes a recent tra- veller, are not only so sudden, but so extensive, as to render it difficult to trace the exact line of its bed,—and sometimes, for several miles, having its direct course towards the sea, it appears to flow back into the mountains in which it rises. The Achelous brings down from the mountains an immense quantity of earthy particles, which have formed a number of small islands at its mouth, which belong to the group anciently called Echi- nades; and part of the mainland near its mouth is only alluvial deposition. [Echinades.] (Leake, Northern Greece, vol. i. p. 136, seq., vol. iii. p. 513, vol. iv. p. 211; Mure, Journal of a Tour in Greece, vol. i. p. 102.) The chief tributaries of the Achelous were:—on its left, the Campylus (Ka/aTTvAos, Diod. xix. 67: Medphovai), a river of considerable size, flowing from Dolopia through the territory of the Dryopes and Eurytanes, and the Cyathus {KvaOos, Pol. ap. Ath. p. 424, c.) flow- ing out of the lake Hyrie into the main stream just above Conope: — on its light the Petitarus (Liv. xliii. 22) in Aperantia, and the Anapus (‘'^ vavos'), which fell into the main stream in Acarnania 80 stadia S. of Stratus. (Thuc. ii. 82.)