The Spercheios (, Sperkheiós), also known as the Spercheus from its Latin name, is a river in Phthiotis in central Greece. It is long,[ Greece in Figures January - March 2018, p. 12] and its drainage area is .
It is referenced in a surviving fragment of Aeschylus' play Philoctetes, quoted in The Frogs, as a place for cattle.
River
The river begins in the
Tymfristos mountains on the border with
Evrytania and flows to the east through the village Agios Georgios Tymfristou, entering a wide plain. It flows along the towns
Makrakomi and
Leianokladi, and south of the Phthiotidan capital Lamia. The river flows through an area of former wetlands, that have been reclaimed for agriculture. It empties into the
Malian Gulf of the
Aegean Sea southeast of Lamia. In antiquity, the mouth of the river was the site of Antikyra, which was famed for its
black hellebore and
white hellebore.
Several studies have been conducted regarding the river's hydrological regime.[ 1.] Its silt has slowly filled the Malian Gulf, turning Thermopylae from a narrow pass into a wide plain.
God
Homer's
Iliad names the river as the father (by
Achilles's half-sister
Polydora) of
Menesthius, one of Achilles's lieutenants. Antoninus Liberalis notes the tradition that
Cerambus was punished for claiming that the
of
Othrys, the
Spercheides, were the daughters of Spercheios by the
naiad Deino. Antoninus Liberalis also relates the account that Spercheios and
Polydora son was Dryops, king of
Mount Oeta, who fathered
Dryope.
[Antoninus Liberalis, 32 with reference from Nicander, Metamorphoses Book 1]
Citations
Bibliography
External links
