Bathos (Arcadia)
Bathos ( Greek Βάθος "deep", "abyss") was a place of worship between Trapezous and Basilis near the river Alpheios in the Parrhasia region in southern Arcadia .
According to the description of Pausanias, it was a gorge, near which there was an earth fire and a periodically drying up spring. The source was called Olympias . The mysteries of the “Great Goddesses” are celebrated in this gorge every two years. Since Pausanias understands the goddess Demeter and her daughter Kore- Persephone elsewhere under the "Great Goddesses" and also numerous female cult figures and several representations of pigs have been found during excavations, it can be assumed that it is a place of worship of the Demeter- Kore acts.
Otherwise, Pausanias does not give any more precise information, neither on details of the cult practiced there nor on the type of fire. The earth fire could have been a peat fire , at least that's what Bather and Yorke suspect, who carried out excavations near Bathos in the 19th century.
Pausanias also reports that the people of Arcadia believed that the gigantomachy took place there and not, as is usually the case, in the Thracian Pallene , the westernmost mountain range of the Chalcidice . Bather and Yorke suspect that the mammoth bones, which are particularly abundant in the area, were the cause of the location of the Battle of the Giants in Arcadia. Pausanias had seen gigantic bones in the shrine of the boy Asclepius in Megalopolis , which he attributed to giants.
swell
- Pausanias, description of Greece 8.29.1
literature
- AG Bather, VW Yorke: Excavations on the Probable Sites of Basilis and Bathos. In: The Journal of Hellenic Studies . Volume 13, 1892-1893, pp. 227-231.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.31.1
- ^ Bather, Yorke: Excavations , p. 229
- ^ Bather, Yorke: Excavations , p. 227
- ↑ Pindar , Nemeische Ode 1.100, Isthmische Ode 6.48; Libraries of Apollodorus 1.6.1; Lykophron 1408; Strabon 7 p. 330; Stephanos of Byzantium sv Pallene
- ^ Bather, Yorke: Excavations , p. 231. At that time, mammoth bones found in the area were in the museum of Dimitsana .
- ↑ Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.32.5. See also: William Kendrick Pritchett : Studies in ancient Greek topography. Volume 8, University of California Press, Berkeley 1992, pp. 45 f.