This survey (Part II of which will be published shortly in the Annual) includes all Laconia, as far as the ancient borders with Messenia and Arcadia, the Thyreatis, and the islands of Kythera and Antikythera. Most of the results have been established by surface research alone, in 1936–8 and 1956–8. Little was previously known about the distribution of prehistoric sites in Laconia, and few settlements have been excavated.Much of Laconia is either mountain or hill country. The ranges of Taygetus and Parnon form the bones of the province, while between them the Eurotas flows through the fertile alluvial plains of Sparta and Helos down to the Laconian Gulf. The Spartan plain, the central Eurotas valley, is bounded to the north by broken hill country, to the west by the great mountain wall of Taygetus (Plates 15a and the map, Plate 24), spurs of which also enclose it on the south, and to the east by the great Parnon range. It is one of the most fertile plains in Greece, and must at all times have been able to support a considerable settled population.
This paper covers the remaining districts of Laconia which have not been described in the last Annual, as well as the islands of Kythera and Antikythera. We include a Chronological Table, Distribution Maps, and a short summary. Abbreviations used are the same as for Part I.Gythion and Cranae:So far no prehistoric remains have been discovered on the acropolis at Gythion, although the south and east terraces are covered with classical and Roman pottery. On the island of Cranae, however (Plate 18a), obsidian is plentiful, and recently a considerable quantity of L.H. III sherds (of rather poor quality) has been found. The island measures about 300 metres east to west and 100 metres north to south, and the prehistoric settlement seems to have occupied about half of this area. There is now very little depth of soil, except in the vicinity of the small Turkish fort in the centre (Plate 18a). The amount of Mycenaean pottery indicates a fairly important site, such as the Homeric story of the flight of Paris and Helen from here might lead us to expect (Il. iii. 443–6). It is likely that there was also some E.H. occupation, since some of the coarse ware appears to be handmade.
This entry in the Catalogue comes immediately after the Rhodian contingent under Tlepolemos, and immediately before Achilles' Myrmidons. None of the three leaders appears elsewhere, nor are any of their relatives mentioned elsewhere, with the exception, of course, of Herakles, grandfather of Pheidippos and Antiphos. Of the islands over which they rule, only Kos is mentioned again.There can be no reason to doubt the identification of Syme, Nisyros, Krapathos, and Kasos, with the islands which still bear those names, apart from a slight and normal change in the case of Krapathos—Karpathos. By Κῶς Εὐρυπύλοιο πόλις is presumably meant a city on the site of the present Kos-town, called elsewhere Μερόπις. Thus the Delian Hymn to Apollo refers to Kos as πόλις Μερόπων ἀνθρώπων. This is borne out by the other references to Kos in the Iliad, for there it is given the epithet εὖ ναιομένην, which elsewhere seems to be applied to cities.The problem of what Homer meant by νῆσοι Καλύδναι was already being discussed in Strabo's time. He says that the general opinion (φασί) was that νῆσοι Καλύδναι meant Kalymna and the islands near by, Kalymna perhaps being once called Καλύδνα, but that some said that Leros and Kalymna were meant, while Demetrios of Skepsis held that Καλύδναι was a plural similar to Ἀθῆναι or Θῆβαι. While there does not seem to be any good evidence that Kalymna (= Kalymnos) was alone ever called Καλύδνα or Καλύδναι, there is no doubt that the people of Kalymna and the adjacent islands—presumably Telendos and Pserimos, and possibly also Kalolimnos—were called Καλύδνιοι in the fifth century B.C.
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