Tritaea (Achaea)

37°57′32″N 21°41′13″E / 37.959°N 21.687°E / 37.959; 21.687

Ruins of the ancient town

Tritaea or Tritaia (Ancient Greek: Τριταία)[1] was a polis (city-state)[2] of Achaea, and the most inland of the 12 Achaean cities, was distant 120 stadia from Pharae. According Pausanias, Tritaea's foundation was said to be due to either: Celbidas, who came from Cumae; or Melanippus, a son of Ares and Triteia, herself a daughter of Triton and priestess of Athena, and that Melanippus named the town after his mother.[3]

It was one of the four cities that took the lead in reviving the Achaean League during the 124th Olympiad (c. 280 BCE).[4] In the Social War it suffered from the attacks of the Aetolians and Eleians.[5] Its territory was annexed to Patrae by Augustus, when he made the latter city a colony after the Battle of Actium.[6] Tritaea was home to Agesarchus of Tritaea, an Olympic victor around 120 BCE, whose statue graced Olympia.

Highlights of Pausanias's visit in the 2nd century included a white marble tomb with paintings by Nicias in the vicinity of the city. Also in the city there was a sanctuary of the gods, with images of clay and in honour of which an annual feast was celebrated, and also a temple of Athena with a stone image that had replaced another that the Romans had taken to Rome. There sacrifices were celebrated to Ares and to Triteia.[6] In Triteia there was a sanctuary of the gods called Almighty (Μεγίστων θεῶν), and their statues in the sanctuary were made of clay. In honor of these gods every year a festival was held.[7]

The site of Tritaea is located at modern Agia Marina.[8][9]

  1. ^ Stephanus of Byzantium. Ethnica. Vol. s.v.
  2. ^ Mogens Herman Hansen & Thomas Heine Nielsen (2004). "Achaia". An inventory of archaic and classical poleis. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 486. ISBN 0-19-814099-1.
  3. ^ Pausanias (1918). "22.8". Description of Greece. Vol. 7. Translated by W. H. S. Jones; H. A. Ormerod. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann – via Perseus Digital Library.
  4. ^ Polybius. The Histories. Vol. 2.41.
  5. ^ Polybius. The Histories. Vol. 4.6, 4.59-60.
  6. ^ a b Pausanias (1918). "22.6". Description of Greece. Vol. 7. Translated by W. H. S. Jones; H. A. Ormerod. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann – via Perseus Digital Library. et seq.
  7. ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, 7.22.9
  8. ^ Lund University. Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire.
  9. ^ Richard Talbert, ed. (2000). Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton University Press. p. 58, and directory notes accompanying. ISBN 978-0-691-03169-9.