Chryse (island)

Lemnos

Chryse (/ˈkraɪsi, ˈkraɪzi/; Ancient Greek: Χρύση, romanized: Khrýsē, lit. 'Golden'), also called Lemnian Chryse, was a small island in the Aegean Sea near Lemnos, mentioned by Homer and Sophocles. By the second century, Pausanias[1] and Appian[2] say that it had sunk below the sea. Its location is unknown.

The island's main feature was said to be its temple to Apollo, and its patron deity was the goddess Chryse. The Greek archer Philoctetes stopped there on his way to Troy and was bitten by a viper. Lucullus captured three men there in an ambush during the Third Mithridatic War.[3] The island seems to have disappeared by the second century AD. An ancient oracle (written by Onomacritus) may have predicted this end.[4]

The Description of Greece says:

The following incident proves the might of Fortune to be greater and more marvellous than is shown by the disasters and prosperity of cities. No long sail from Lemnos was once an island Chryse, where, it is said, Philoctetes met with his accident from the water-snake. But the waves utterly overwhelmed it, and Chryse sank and disappeared in the depths ... So temporary and utterly weak are the fortunes of men.

— Pausanias, Description of Greece[1]
  1. ^ a b Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.33.4
  2. ^ Mithridat. c. 72 et seq.
  3. ^ Gillies, John (1820). "XXVII: From Alexander to Augustus". The history of ancient Greece: its colonies and conquests; from the earliest accounts till the division of the Macedonian empire in the East. Including the history of literature, philosophy, and the fine arts, Volume 4, Part 2. Vol. 4. T. Cadell and W. Davies. p. 249.
  4. ^ Javier Martínez (2011). "Onomacritus the Forger, Hipparchus' Scapegoat?". Fakes and Forgers of Classical Literature. Madrid. p. 225. ISBN 978-84-7882-725-1.