Ascra
Ascra (Ancient Greek: Ἄσκρη, Áskrē) was an ancient town in Boeotia which is best known today as the home of the poet Hesiod.[1] It was located upon Mount Helicon, five miles west of Thespiae.[1] According to a lost poetic Atthis by one Hegesinous, a maiden by the name of Ascra lay with Poseidon and bore a son Oeoclus who, together with the Aloadae, founded the town named for his mother.[2] In the Works and Days, Hesiod says that his father was driven from Aeolian Cyme to Ascra by poverty, only to find himself situated in a most unpleasant town (lines 639–40):
νάσσατο δ' ἄγχ' Ἑλικῶνος ὀιζυρῆι ἐνὶ κώμηι |
He settled in a miserable village near Helicon, |
The 4th century BCE astronomer Eudoxus thought even less of Ascra's climate,[3] and by the time he wrote the town had been all but destroyed, a loss commemorated by a similarly lost Hellenistic poem, which opened: "Of Ascra there isn't even a trace anymore" (Ἄσκρης μὲν οὐκέτ' ἐστὶν οὐδ' ἴχνος).[4] This was apparently hyperbole, for in the 2nd century CE Pausanias' could report that a single tower, though not much else, still stood at the site.[5]
Notes
- ^ a b W. Hazlitt (1858) The Classical Gazeteer (London), p. 54, s.v. Ascra.
- ^ Pausanias 9.29.1.
- ^ Strabo, Geographica 9.2.35.
- ^ West, M.L. (1979), "Four Hellenistic First Lines Restored", Classical Quarterly, 29: 324–6, doi:10.1017/s0009838800035953, JSTOR 638099.
- ^ Pausanias 9.29.2.