Ascra
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ascra or Askre (Ancient Greek: Ἄσκρη, romanized: Áskrē) was a town in ancient Boeotia which is best known today as the home of the poet Hesiod.[1] It was located upon Mount Helicon, less than seven and a half miles west of Thespiae.[1] According to a lost poetic Atthis by one Hegesinous, a maiden by the name of Ascra lay with Poseidon and bore a son Oeoclus who, together with the Aloadae, founded the town named for his mother.[2] In the Works and Days, 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):
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He settled in a miserable village near Helicon, |
The 4th century BCE astronomer and general Eudoxus thought even less of Ascra's climate.[3] However, other writers speak of Ascra as abounding in corn,[4] Corinthian hunchbacks, and wine.[5]
By the time Eudoxus wrote, the town had been all but destroyed (by Thespiae sometime between 700 and 650 BCE), a loss commemorated by a similarly lost Hellenistic poem, which opened: "Of Ascra there isn't even a trace anymore" (Ἄσκρης μὲν οὐκέτ' ἐστὶν οὐδ' ἴχνος).[6] 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.[7]
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