Kolonos Hill (; el, Λόφος Κολωνού) is a hill in
Central Greece
Continental Greece ( el, Στερεά Ελλάδα, Stereá Elláda; formerly , ''Chérsos Ellás''), colloquially known as Roúmeli (Ρούμελη), is a traditional geographic region of Greece. In English, the area is usually called Central ...
. It is located in the narrow coastal passage known as
Thermopylae, and is near the city of
Lamia
LaMia Corporation S.R.L., operating as LaMia (short for ''Línea Aérea Mérida Internacional de Aviación''), was a Bolivian charter airline headquartered in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, as an EcoJet subsidiary. It had its origins from the failed ...
.
History
The hill is best known as the site of the final stand of the
300 Spartans
3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societie ...
during the
Battle of Thermopylae
The Battle of Thermopylae ( ; grc, Μάχη τῶν Θερμοπυλῶν, label= Greek, ) was fought in 480 BC between the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Xerxes I and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Sparta under Leonidas I. Lastin ...
in 480 BC.
[Crawford, Osbert Guy Stanhope (1955). ''Said and Done: The Autobiography of an Archaeologist''. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 302] In 1939,
Spyridon Marinatos
Spyridon Nikolaou Marinatos ( el, Σπυρίδων Νικολάου Μαρινάτος; November 4, 1901 – October 1, 1974) was a Greek archaeologist, best known for leading excavations at Akrotiri on Santorini (1967–74), where he died and i ...
, a Greek archaeologist found large numbers of Persian arrows around the hill, which changed the hitherto accepted identification of the site where the Greeks had fallen, slain by Persian arrows.
A commemorative stone was placed on the site in antiquity, but the original stone has not survived. In 1955, a new stone was erected, with Simonides's epigram engraved on it.[Herodotu]
VII, 228
/ref>
References
Landforms of Phthiotis
Hills of Greece
Battle of Thermopylae
Landforms of Central Greece
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