Hylaia

Hylaia ( ancient Greek Ὑλαία "woodland") was a tree-lined stretch of land north of the Black Sea in the area of ​​the Scythians . According to Stephanos of Byzantium , his Scythian name was Abike (Ἀβίκη).

According to Herodotus , it was east of the Borysthenes ( Dnepr ) river. It is located in the area between the Kinburn Peninsula and Skadovsk .

According to the legend of the Greeks who settled on the Black Sea, while searching for his stolen horses, Heracles met a serpent woman here in a cave, with whom he fathered three sons: Agathyrsus, Gelonos and Scythes. The latter was the eponym of the Scythians and from him the kings of the Scythians descended.

The Sykthe Anacharsis took part in a festival of the Mother of Gods in Kyzikos on the Propontis and vowed to introduce this festival in his homeland. When he was doing this secretly in his home in Hylaia, he was killed with an arrow shot by his brother, the Scythian king Saulios , because of his alienating conduct .

After Pliny the Elder , the part of the Black Sea bordering on Scythia was called Hylaeum mare and he also mentions the people of Hylaei .

swell

• Herodotus 4.9; 4.19.19
• Pseudo-Skymnos 844 f. (in the Periplus Ponti Euxini )
• Alexander Polyhistor with Stephanos of Byzantium, sub Ὑλαία

literature

• Iris von Bredow : Hylaia. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 5, Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-476-01475-4 , Sp. 780.