Colonos

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Coordinates: 37 ° 59 ′ 44 "  N , 23 ° 42 ′ 55"  E

The Kolonos hill was a demos in ancient Greece and is now a district of Athens . Kolonos is best known as the birthplace of Sophocles and the setting for his drama Oedipus auf Kolonos .

history

Originally the place was called Hippeios Kolonos (Ίππειος Κολωνός, "horse hill") and in ancient times it was a demos around three kilometers north of Athens , near the Academy of Plato (only 700 meters away). In the place there was a well-known grove of the Erinyen and a temple of Poseidon Hippeios , god of the sea and patron god of horses. The temple that gave the place its name was built in 265 BC. Destroyed in the Chremonideischen War during the siege of Athens by King Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia.

Painting Oedipus on Colonus

The most famous son of the demos was here in 497/496 BC. Born in BC, poet Sophocles. In his important drama Oedipus auf Kolonos he lets the mythical king of Thebes die and buried in Kolonos in exile.

In his “Travels in Greece” (1776) Richard Chandler describes his path to the Academy of Plato near Kolonos:

“ Plato began to teach in the academy [...] After a while he preferred a small garden at Colonus Hippius, which belonged to him himself. [...] Colonus Hippius, the Horse Mound, was behind the Academy, and ten stadiums , five quarters of a mile , from the city [Athens]. There was an altar of Neptunus Hippius and Minerva , together with a heroum , or monument, of Pirithous and Theseus , Oedipus and Adrastus . It was said that the unfortunate Theban, deported and seeking help, stayed here in the sacred precinct of the Furies; But Pausanias prefers to take the thing she tells Homer . Antigonus had burned the grove and temple of Neptune. Sophocles was born at Colonus and lived there. Here were the copper mines. "

Modern Kolonos

Today Kolonos is a densely populated working-class district of Athens.

On the hill of Kolonos there are grave stelae of the archaeologists Karl Otfried Müller and Charles Lenormant who died in Athens in the 19th century and were buried on the Kolonos, as well as the Kolonos open-air theater ( Ανοιχτό Θέατρο Κολωνού ).

Web links

Commons : Kolonos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Chandler: Travels in Greece ("Travels in Greece"). Olms, Hildesheim 1985 (reprint of the Leipzig 1777 edition, translated by Heinrich Christian Boie ), ISBN 3-487-05741-7 , p. 153 f. ( Digitized version )