Tritaea (Achaea)
Coordinates: 37°57′32″N 21°41′13″E / 37.959°N 21.687°E
Tritaea or Tritaia (Ancient Greek: Τριταία)[1] was a town 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.[2]
It was one of the four cities that took the lead in reviving the Achaean League during the 124th Olympiad (c. 280 BCE).[3] In the Social War it suffered from the attacks of the Aetolians and Eleians.[4] Its territory was annexed to Patrae by Augustus, when he made the latter city a colony after the Battle of Actium.[5] 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.[5]
References
- ↑ Stephanus of Byzantium. Ethnica. s.v.
- ↑ Pausanias. Description of Greece. 7.22.8.
- ↑ Polybius. The Histories. 2.41.
- ↑ Polybius. The Histories. 4.6, 4.59-60.
- 1 2 Pausanias. Description of Greece. 7.22.6. et seq.}}
- ↑ Lund University. Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire.
- ↑ Richard Talbert, ed. (2000). Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton University Press. p. 58, and directory notes accompanying.