Trachis

For the town of ancient Phocis, see Trachis (Phocis).

Trachis (Greek: Τραχίς, Trakhís) was a region in ancient Greece. Situated south of the river Spercheios, it was populated by the Malians. It was also a polis (city-state).[1]

Its main town was also called Trachis until 426 BC, when it was refounded as a Spartan colony and became Heraclea Trachinia. It is located to the west of Thermopylae. Trachis is located just west of the westernmost tip of the island of Euboea, north of Delphi. Near this place archaeologists discovered tombs from the Mycenaean period.[2]

According to Greek mythology Trachis was the home of Ceyx and Alcyone. Heracles went to Trachis after the death of Eunomus. The town is mentioned by Homer (as one of the cities subject to Achilles[3]) and for the last time in antiquity by Pausanias.[4]

  1. ^ Mogens Herman Hansen & Thomas Heine Nielsen (2004). "Thessaly and Adjacent Regions". An inventory of archaic and classical poleis. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 713. ISBN 0-19-814099-1.
  2. ^ Trachis was identified as a Mycenaean site by R. Hope Simpson and J. F. Lazenby, "The Kingdom of Pelius and Achilles," Antiquity, XXXIII (1933), 103.
  3. ^ Homer Iliad 2.682
  4. ^ Pausanias, Guide to Greece 10.22.1