Prosymna () was a town in

ancient Argolis The regions of ancient Greece were sub-divisions of the Hellenic world as conceived by the ancient Greeks, shown by their presence in the works of ancient historians and geographers or in surviving legends and myths. Conceptually, there is no cl ...

, in whose territory the celebrated Heraeum, or temple of

Hera In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; ; in Ionic Greek, Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women, and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she is queen of the twelve Olympians and Mount Oly ...

, stood.

Statius Publius Papinius Statius (Greek language, Greek: Πόπλιος Παπίνιος Στάτιος; , ; ) was a Latin poetry, Latin poet of the 1st century CE. His surviving poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the ''Thebaid (Latin poem), Theb ...

gives it the epithet "celsa." Pausanias mentions only a district of this name. According to

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

, its name derives from a daughter of

Asterion In Greek mythology, Asterion (Ancient Greek, Greek: , gen.: , literally "starry") or Asterius () may refer to the following figures: * Asterion (god), Asterion, one of the River gods (Greek mythology), river gods. * Asterius (giant), Asterius ...

called

Prosymna Prosymna () was a town in ancient Argolis, in whose territory the celebrated Heraion of Argos, Heraeum, or temple of Hera, stood. Statius gives it the epithet "celsa." Pausanias (geographer), Pausanias mentions only a district of this name. Accord ...

who, together with her sisters

Acraea Acraea (Ancient Greek: means 'of the heights' from ''akraios'') was a name that had several uses in Greek and Roman mythology. * Acraea, the naiad daughter of the river-god Asterion near Mycenae, who together with her sisters Euboea and Prosy ...

and

Euboea Euboea ( ; , ), also known by its modern spelling Evia ( ; , ), is the second-largest Greek island in area and population, after Crete, and the sixth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is separated from Boeotia in mainland Greece by ...

, were wet-nurses of Hera.

Archaeology

The place was inhabited since the

Neolithic period The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wid ...

. In 1878, the area of ancient Prosymna,

Panagiotis Stamatakis Panagiotis Stamatakis (; –1885) (sometimes anglicised as Panayotis or Stamatakes) was a Greek people, Greek archaeology, archaeologist. He is noted particularly for his role in supervising the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae in 18 ...

found a

beehive tomb A beehive tomb, also known as a tholos tomb (plural tholoi; from , ''tholotoi táphoi'', "domed tomb(s)"), is a burial structure characterized by its false dome created by corbelling, the superposition of successively smaller rings of mudb ...

that was built in the Mycenaean epoch and that was also reused in later periods. Archaeological investigations continued under the auspices of the

Swedish Institute at Athens The Swedish Institute at Athens (; ) was founded in 1946 and is one of 19 foreign archaeological institutes operating in Athens, Greece. The Institute is one of three Swedish research institutes in the Mediterranean, along with the Swedish Insti ...

in the 1930s and then during the 1980s and 1990s that found two settlement areas on two different sides of the Mastos hill slope, belonging to the Early and Late Helladic periods, respectively. They have found chamber tombs and large amounts of pottery that testify that the place was an important center of production of this material for many centuries. During the

Hellenistic period 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 ...

and the early and late

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

the area also experienced a boom.Berbati en Argolis
on the website of the Swedish Institute of Athens.

References

Populated places in ancient Argolis Former populated places in Greece Ancient Greek archaeological sites in Greece Mycenaean sites in Argolis {{AncientArgolis-geo-stub