Arne () was the chief city of the
Aeolian Boeotians in
ancient Thessaly
Thessaly or Thessalia (Attic Greek: , ''Thessalía'' or , ''Thettalía'') was one of the traditional regions of Ancient Greece. During the Mycenaean Greece, Mycenaean period, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, a name that continued to be used for one of ...
, which was said to have derived its name from the mythological
Arne, a daughter of
Aeolus
In Greek mythology, Aiolos, transcribed as Aeolus (; ; ) refers to three characters. These three are often difficult to tell apart, and even the ancient mythographers appear to have been perplexed about which Aeolus was which. Diodorus Siculus m ...
. The town was said to have been founded three generations before the
Trojan War
The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the twelfth or thirteenth century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Homer), Achaeans (Ancient Greece, Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris (mytho ...
. According to
Thucydides
Thucydides ( ; ; BC) was an Classical Athens, Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts Peloponnesian War, the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been d ...
the Aeolian Boeotians were expelled from Arne by the
Thessalians sixty years after the Trojan war, and settled in the country called
Boeotia
Boeotia ( ), sometimes Latinisation of names, Latinized as Boiotia or Beotia (; modern Greek, modern: ; ancient Greek, ancient: ), is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the modern regions of Greece, region of Central Greece (adm ...
after them; but other writers, inverting the order of events, represent the Thessalian Arne as founded by Boeotians, who had been expelled from their country by the
Pelasgians
The name Pelasgians (, ) was used by Classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks, or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergence of the Greeks. In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly all ...
.
Stephanus of Byzantium
Stephanus or Stephen of Byzantium (; , ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD) was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethnica'' (). Only meagre fragments of the dictionary survive, but the epit ...
wrote that later
Cierium
Cierium or Kierion () was a town and polis (city-state) in the district of Thessaliotis in ancient Thessaly, which according to some ancient commentators, such as Stephanus of Byzantium was the successor to the Homer, Homeric Arne (Thessaly), Arn ...
occupied the site of Arne, which was accepted at least by
William Smith, writing in the 19th century,
and by the editors of the
Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World
The ''Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World'' is a large-format English language atlas of ancient Europe, Asia, and North Africa, edited by Richard Talbert, Richard J. A. Talbert. The time period depicted is roughly from Archaic Greece, ...
;
others place Arne at a site nearby, but not at, Cierium.
If Arne is Cierium, it is located at
Pyrgos Kieriou (Πύργος Κιερίου), in the municipal unit of
Arni, municipality of
Sofades, periphery of
Karditsa,
Thessaly
Thessaly ( ; ; ancient Aeolic Greek#Thessalian, Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic regions of Greece, geographic and modern administrative regions of Greece, administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient Thessaly, a ...
.
[ ]Lund University
Lund University () is a Public university, public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially foun ...
's Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire, places Arne at Magoula Makria.[
]
References
Populated places in ancient Thessaly
Cities in ancient Greece
Former populated places in Greece
{{AncientThessaly-geo-stub