Eretria
Eretria is a town in Euboea, Greece, facing the coast of Attica across the narrow South Euboean Gulf. It was an important Greek polis in the 6th and 5th century BC, mentioned by many famous writers and actively involved in significant historical events.
Excavations of the ancient city began in the 1890s and have been conducted since 1964 by the Greek Archaeological Service and the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece.
History of Eretria
Prehistory
The first evidence for human activity in the area of Eretria are pottery shards and stone artifacts from the late Neolithic period found on the Acropolis as well as in the plain. No permanent structures have yet been found. It is therefore unclear whether a permanent settlement existed at that time.The first known settlement from the Early Helladic period was located on the plain. A granary and several other buildings, as well as a pottery kiln, have been found so far. This settlement was moved to the top of the Acropolis in the Middle Helladic period because the plain was flooded by the nearby lagoon. In the Late Helladic period, the population dwindled and the remains found so far have been interpreted as an observation post. The site was abandoned during the Greek Dark Ages.
Archaic to Roman period
The oldest archaeological finds date the foundation of the city to the Greek Dark Ages.The earliest surviving mention of Eretria was by Homer, who listed Eretria as one of the Greek cities which sent ships to the Trojan War. In the 8th century BC, Eretria and her near neighbour and rival, Chalcis, were both powerful and prosperous trading cities. Eretria controlled the Aegean islands of Andros, Tenos and Ceos. They also held territory in Boeotia on the Greek mainland. Eretria was also involved in the Greek colonisation and founded the colonies of Pithekoussai and Cumae in Italy together with Chalcis.
At the end of the 8th century BC, however, Eretria and Chalcis fought a prolonged war for control of the fertile Lelantine plain. Little is known of the details of this war, but it is clear that Eretria was defeated. The city was destroyed and Eretria lost her lands in Boeotia and her Aegean dependencies. Neither Eretria nor Chalcis ever again counted for much in Greek politics. As a result of this defeat, Eretria turned to colonisation. She planted colonies in the northern Aegean, on the coast of Macedon, in Italy, and in Sicily.
It became an important city in the 6th/5th century BC mentioned by many famous writers and actively involved in significant historical events. The Eretrians were Ionians and were thus natural allies of Athens. When the Ionian Greeks in Asia Minor rebelled against Persia in 499 BC, Eretria joined Athens in sending aid to the rebels, because Miletus had supported Eretria in the Lelantine War. The rebels burned Sardis, but were defeated and the Eretrian general Eualcides was killed. Darius made a point of punishing Eretria during his invasion of Greece. In 490 BC the city was sacked and burned by the Persians under the admiral Datis. In retribution for the stout resistance, the victors killed all the male citizens and deported women and children barefoot to Arderikka in Susiana, Persia, forcing them into slavery. The Persians also destroyed the great temple of Apollo, built around 510 BC; parts of a pediment were found in 1900, including the torso of a statue of Athena.
Eretria was rebuilt shortly afterwards and took part with 600 hoplites in the Battle of Plataea. The ancient writer Plutarch mentions a woman of Eretria, "who was kept by Artabanus" at the Persian court of Artaxerxes, who facilitated the audience that Themistocles obtained with the Persian king. During the fifth century BC the whole of Euboea became part of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire. Eretria and other cities of Euboea rebelled unsuccessfully against Athens in 446 BC. During the Peloponnesian War Eretria was an Athenian ally against her Dorian rivals Sparta and Corinth. But soon the Eretrians, along with the rest of the Empire, found Athenian domination oppressive. When the Spartans defeated the Athenians at the Battle of Eretria in 411 BC, the Euboean cities all rebelled.
After her eventual defeat by Sparta in 404 BC, Athens soon recovered and re-established her hegemony over Euboea, which was an essential source of grain for the urban population. The Eretrians rebelled again in 349 BC and this time the Athenians could not recover control. In 343 BC supporters of Philip II of Macedon gained control of the city, but the Athenians under Demosthenes recaptured it in 341 BC.
Macedonian period
The Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, in which Philip defeated the combined armies of the rest of the Greeks, marked the end of the Greek cities as independent states. However, under Macedonian rule Eretria experienced a new period of prosperity which lasted until the 3rd century as attested by many inscriptions, by extensions to the west and south sections of the walls and by many other private and public new buildings including the circus.From 318 to 312 BC King Cassander lived at Eretria and commissioned the painter Philoxenus of Eretria to paint the battle of Issus, of which the famous Alexander Mosaic in the Naples museum is a copy and the wall paintings in Phillip's tomb at Vergina are connected.
From 304 BC Demetrius I granted the city partial autonomy. During this time the city was governed by Menedemos who founded the Eretrian school of philosophy. After the Chremonidean War a permanent Macedonian garrison was installed.
Roman period
In 198 BC in the Second Macedonian War Eretria was plundered by the Romans. The admiral Lucius Quinctius Flamininus was joined by the allied fleets of Attalus I of Pergamon and of Rhodes, and used them in besieging Eretria. He eventually took the town during a night-time assault during which the citizens surrendered. Flamininus came away with a large collection of art works as his share of the booty.Eretria became an object of contention between the Romans and Macedonians, but was given partial independence and experienced a new period of prosperity. Under the Romans, athletic contests for children and youths called the Romaia were held.
In 87 BC it was finally destroyed in the First Mithridatic War and gradually declined further.
Site monuments
Many remains of the ancient city can be seen today including:- Parts of the city walls and gates
- The Theatre
- Palaces I and II
- Upper and Lower Gymnasiums
- House of the mosaics
- The Baths
- Temple of Apollo Daphnephoros
- Temple of Artemis
- Temple of Isis
- Temple of Dionysos
- The Acropolis
- Macedonian tomb
Temple of Apollo Daphnephoros
According to the Homeric hymn to Apollo, when the god was seeking for a location to found its oracle, he arrived to the Lelantine plain. The first temple is dated to the Geometric period and was situated probably near the harbour, as the sea then reached the area of the Agora. The hecatompedon apsidal edifice is the earliest in its type among those mentioned by Homer, and slightly after the hecatompedon temple of Hera on the island of Samos. It was flanked to the south by another apsidal building which also came to light: the so-called Daphniforio or "space with laurels" is the most ancient edifice in Eretria, related to the early cult of Apollo in Delphi.
At the centre of this edifice were preserved the clay bases supporting the laurel trunks that propped up the roof. In the early sixteenth century a second hecatompedon temple was erected through earth fills upon its Geometric predecessor, on a solid artificial terrace. This temple had wooden columns, and was subsequently covered with earth in order to build the later and most renowned of all temples in the city.
Construction started at the late sixth century BC and the temple was perhaps still unfinished when the Persians razed the city in 490 BC. Poros stone and marble were the materials used for this Doric peristyle temple. It had a prodomos and an opisthodomos arranged with two columns in antis; the cella.
The majority of architectural parts from this temple and other sanctuaries of the city were re-used as construction material; only a few drums together with fragmented capitals and triglyphs remain from the superstructure of the monument.
Of the sumptuous sculptural decoration survive only parts of the west pediment featuring in relief the fight of the Amazons. The centre was occupied by Athena and is partially preserved, depicting her trunk with the Gorgoneion on the thorax; a superb work of art is the complex of Theseus and Antiope marked by sensitivity and softness of the form, internal force and clarity, despite the ornamental tendency obvious in the coiffures and the folds of their clothes. These sculptures are impregnated by the rules of archaic plasticity; the analogies are rendered in an innovative manner, a precursor to the idealization and the force of the classical art. The entire composition supposedly featured chariots to Athena's right and left, one chariot presumably carrying Theseus and Antiope, while Hercules might ride the other, and the picture could be complemented by fighting Amazons and a dead warrior. The east pediment possibly narrated the Gigantomachy. The details of the faces and the clothes were coloured, thus rendering the depiction more vivid. Fragmented sculptures that may be part of the temple after the destruction by the Persians have been located in Rome. Today are visible only the foundations of the Post-Archaic temple, as well as remains of the Geometric temples uncovered in lower deposits.
The temples in the temenos of Apollo Daphniforos were excavated between 1899 and 1910 by Κ. Kourouniotis. Further investigations were conducted by Mrs. I. Konstantinou and by the Swiss Archaeological School.