Excavations at Theotokou, Thessaly

Abstract

Theotokou lies at the south-eastern corner of the Magnesian peninsula, a little to the north of the bay of Kato Georgi. The site itself is the seaward end of a narrow valley, where a small brook discharges into a little cove just to the north of a hill called Kastro (Fig. 1). Here there stands a small chapel built in 1807, and dedicated to the Virgin. In the walls of the chapel itself are several ancient blocks, and north and south of it traces of walls are visible. Immediately to the west is a large mass of ruins formerly covered with brushwood; round these stand six fragments of Doric columns, and a seventh lies in a cornfield some distance to the west: an eighth, which was seen here, has disappeared. This place, the traditional site of Sepias, was first visited by a local gentleman, Theódoros Zirghános.

Thetis in the ‘Ovens’: A Reconsideration of Herodotus’ Topography of Magnesia

“…Map of Magnesia and northern Euboea: the scene of the Battle of Artemision and its prelude (drawn by the author). 16 Mézières 1853 Wace andDroop (1906-1907) as well as with the proximity of the Myrmex reef (Hdt. 7.183): 'qui attire les Barbares vers les lieux des catastrophes', not realizing that Aphetai is already very close to the Myrmex); also Green (1996) 120.…”

“…17 Wace (1906) 146-47; Wace andDroop (1906-1907) 311; Pritchett (1963) 3-4; Müller (1987) 361-63; Talbert (2000); Morton (2001) 73, n. 8.…”

“…This temple also appears in Euripides' Andromache (16-25); on the basis of that text, it seems that it was yet another site that claimed to be the location of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. The slight remains of a Doric temple under a church of the Virgin in Theotokou, near Liri and Cape Katigiorgis (Wace andDroop (1906-1907)) have also been interpreted as a Thetideion (for example by Borgeaud (1995) 23-25, n. 11), but this is completely speculative. Thetis does appear on coins from Larisa Kremaste (near modern Pelasgia), in the extreme southern part of Thessaly.…”

Thessaly (Prehistoric to Roman)

“…Finally, at Theotokou, on the Aegean side, Wace investigated Iron Age tombs, a Doric temple of the fourth century BC and a Late Roman/Early Christian basilica in 1907 (Wace andDroop [1906-1907]; Liapis [2004]). In the late 1990s (Adrymi-Sismani in ADelt 51 [1996] B1 333) and in 2001 (Alexandrou in ADelt 56-59 [2001-2004 Chr B2 466) work conducted by the 13 th EPCA on the northern slope of the Paliokastro hill revealed part of the acropolis wall and of a building of the Classical period, with plentiful pottery of the Classical and Hellenistic periods.…”

The Absence of Chiron

“…53 Attempts have been made to narrow down the Thetis-connection of Sepias, and to prove that the area hosted a specific cult-rather than the more general sacrosanctity suggested by Herodotus' account-by unearthing material remains; but they have not met with success. 54 Far more likely is that the whole area was associated with and sacred to Thetis-as Herodotus indeed says-and that this general sacrosanctity precluded the necessity of a specific cult site with man-made trappings of worship. Communication with the goddess could, most likely, take place anywhere on the promontory as long as the appropriate rites were performed.…”