Ascra or Askre () was a town in

ancient 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 ...

which is best known today as the home of the poet

Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...

.W. Hazlitt (1858) ''The Classical Gazetteer'' (London)
p. 54, s.v. Ascra
It was located upon

Mount Helicon Mount Helicon (; ) is a mountain in the region of Thespiai in Boeotia, Greece, celebrated in Greek mythology. With an altitude of , it is located approximately from the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth. Some researchers maintain that Helicon ...

, less than seven and a half miles west of

Thespiae Thespiae ( ; ) was an ancient Greek city (''polis'') in Boeotia. It sits at the foot of Mount Helicon and near right bank of the Thespius River (modern name Kanavari River). Thespiae was a Boeotian state sporadically involved in the military fe ...

. According to a lost poetic ''Atthis'' by one Hegesinous, a maiden by the name of Ascra lay with

Poseidon Poseidon (; ) is one of the twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and mythology, presiding over the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses.Burkert 1985pp. 136–139 He was the protector of seafarers and the guardian of many Hellenic cit ...

and bore a son Oeoclus who, together with the

Aloadae In Greek mythology, the Aloadae () or Aloads (Ancient Greek: Ἀλωάδαι ''Aloadai'') were Otus or Otos (Ὦτος means "insatiate") and Ephialtes (Ἐφιάλτης, which means "nightmare"), Thessalian sons of Princess Iphimedia, wife of ...

, founded the town named for his mother. In the ''

Works and Days ''Works and Days'' ()The ''Works and Days'' is sometimes called by the Latin translation of the title, ''Opera et Dies''. Common abbreviations are ''WD'' and ''Op'' for ''Opera''. is a didactic poem written by ancient Greek poet Hesiod around ...

'', Hesiod says that his father was driven from Aeolian Cyme to Ascra by poverty, only to find himself situated in a most unpleasant town ( lines 639–40): The 4th century BCE astronomer and general Eudoxus thought even less of Ascra's climate. However, other writers speak of Ascra as abounding in corn, Corinthian hunchbacks, and wine. By the time Eudoxus wrote, the town had been all but destroyed (by

sometime between 700 and 650 BCE), a loss commemorated by a similarly lost

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

poem, which opened: "Of Ascra there isn't even a trace anymore" (). This apparently was a hyperbole, for in the 2nd century CE, Pausanias could report that a single tower, though not much else, still stood at the site.Pausania
9.29.2

Notes

Cities in ancient Boeotia Populated places in ancient Boeotia Former populated places in Greece {{AncientBoeotia-geo-stub