Kassope

Kassope ( Greek Κασσώπη ) was an ancient city in northwestern Greece . Located in the Epirus region, Kassope has extensive evidence of a late Classical Greek city.

The dates of establishment and dissolution are very well dated. The city was not built over again later. Since there are almost no literary sources on Kassope, nothing more can be said about the political structure and everyday life of Kassope.

Kassope lies in a depression below a ridge and is quite steep throughout.

Excavation history

In 1805 the English archaeologist William Martin Leake traveled through the Epirus and came across the few superficial ruins of the city of Kassope for the first time. After a few days' stay, Leake was able to connect the site with the ancient city of Kassope and traveled on with a few sketches in her luggage.

In the next time only a few archaeologists visited the place described by Leake and came to the same findings again and again. Among them was Ferdinand Noack , a famous German archaeologist and frequent visitor to northwestern Greece.

1952-1955 first excavations under the Greek archaeologists found in Kassope Sotiris Dakaris take that from 1976 to 1982 as a joint project of the Architecture Unit of the German Archaeological Institute and the Greek Ephorate led by Dakaris, Wolfram Hoepfner , Konstantina Gravani and Ernst-Ludwig Schwandner continued were.

Kassope founded and closed

The Kassopeans, part of the Thesproter tribe , founded around 350 BC. The city of Kassope through a planned synoikism of its surrounding villages. This dating is based on an inscribed mention of Kassope in one of the Thearodoken lists from Epidauros, which is certainly from 360 BC. Chr. – 355 BC Dated.

The city was abandoned when Augustus died in 31 BC. BC founded the city of Nikopolis a few kilometers south of Kassope and commanded Synoikismos.

Landscape and economy

In the northern region around Kassope there is easily accessible mountainous land, which is still used for cattle breeding today and which was also used extensively by the ancient Kassopeans. To the south there is a large, fertile plain to the Ambracian Gulf and to Nicopolis, which has been used for agriculture based on archaeological findings.

In the early days Kassope was probably a purely agricultural town, in which only a few craftsmen met the needs of the local population. With the emerging trade with Elish and Corinthian colonies on the coast, especially with Pandosia , Batiai and Ambrakia , the rise of Kassope began, which led to increased trade with the Great Greek colonies in the Hellenistic period . As evidenced by coins, these economic ties made Kassope one of the most important Hellenistic trading nodes. The coin finds from Kassope in particular reflect this image in all its facets.

Always self-sufficient in agriculture, the only thing missing was good stone and natural resources.

Cityscape and architecture

Kassope presents itself as a strip city in the Hippodamian principle, is west-east oriented and divided into 19 horizontal and two vertical streets. The main street is the more southerly vertical street, which leads from the west gate to the east gate and leads past the agora .

Walls and gates

The city wall of Kassope encloses the entire city area and is only not implemented where natural edges of the terrain make a city wall unnecessary. In the northwest and northeast are the two acropoles of the city, which were used as a retreat for the population in the event of siege and war. They are both enclosed by the city wall and each have a cistern . Kassope has three gates, two of which, the west and east gates, are at both ends of the main street. The earliest keystone arches of ancient Greece can be found here . The third gate is the source gate, below the agora.

Residential houses

The residential units are divided into insulae , which consist of two houses in a west-east direction and an irregular number of houses in a north-south direction. The entrances to the houses were each on the long side of the insula and thus facing the side streets.

The question of whether there are type houses in Kassope is still controversial. The Kassopisches Haus in the founding phase certainly has a standardized floor plan. From the entrance one came directly into a small courtyard, from which the two areas of the house opened, the public and the private. In the public area you will find storage rooms, shops and the Andron , in the private area you will find the bedrooms, the bathroom (only identified for certain houses) and the oikos with the stove. The private area of ​​the house was most likely two stories with the public area being one story.

The floor area of ​​a Kassopian house was almost 130 m². The houses were built with a base of polygonal quarry stone masonry and a wall made of mud bricks. The roofs were covered with burnt tiles.

The agora

In the southeast of the city is the agora . The political, social and economic center of the city was located here. As mentioned above, the political order of Kassope can only be inferred from the archaeological sources, which is not easy here. The construction program of the agora includes three buildings and some memorials and memorials. In the far north, as a demarcation from the main street, the Nordstoa can be found, a typical Northwest Greek stoa with two short wall projections on the front. In the southeast is the building identified as Buleuterion and opposite a building that the excavators named Prytaneion , which is still controversial. In front of that is the somewhat younger, smaller western stoa.

The sacred buildings

There are three buildings in Kassope that are referred to as sacred buildings. The Temple of Kassope is located northwest of the city and is known as the Doric Peripteros . All that remains is the temple's foundations. From this, Schwandner reconstructs what is probably the smallest Doric peripteral temple of antiquity. Another sacred building is the Heroon of Kassope, in the south-west of the city. This underground vaulted building is a place of worship for the mythical city hero of Kassope and a place of worship for the ancestors. It is no longer possible to reconstruct which hero it was in Kassope. The Heroon shows the oldest Greek keystone vault.

The third sacred building is a building in the south of the city. This is identified as a sacred building, as its floor plan differs from all the others and no further significance can be proven by findings, which makes its name rather controversial.

The theater

In the north-west of the city is the Kassope Theater, a rather poorly preserved building that represents the typical shape of a Greek theater .

The market building

To the north of the agora is the Kassope market building. The interior of this almost square building is divided into a square and a circumferential corridor, on which the business premises are leaned. In the past, the market building was often identified as a catagogy , which cannot be proven by recent finds. A designation as a market building is probably quite safe.

Kassope today

The ancient facilities can be visited, the place Zalongo in the Preveza regional district serves as a starting point for visits .

literature

• Ernst-Ludwig Schwandner: Kassope. A late classic strip town in northwestern Greece . In: Wolfram Hoepfner (Hrsg.): History of living . tape 1 . Stuttgart 1999, p. 368-383 .
• Wolfram Hoepfner, Ernst-Ludwig Schwandner: House and City in Classical Greece . Munich 1994, p. 114-179 .

Coordinates: 39 ° 8 ′ 52 ″  N , 20 ° 40 ′ 40 ″  E