Bianna

Bianna (Βίαννα) was a young unmarried woman from Biennus (modern Viannos) in Crete, according to Stephanus of Byzantium. After a famine forced a mass emigration, she was among those who fled to an area of Gaul along the river Rhône. During a dance, a chasm opened up in the earth and engulfed her.

According to legend, their companions gave her name to a place, Vienna, which later became the capital of the Celtic Allobroges (Vienne in the Dauphiné).

See also

• Greeks in pre-Roman Gaul

Sources

• Pierre Grimal, Classical Mythology (Blackwell, 1996, from the original French edition of 1951), p. 76 online.
• Stephanus of Byzantium, De urbibus et populi (ed. Gronovius, p. pp. 166–167), citing Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica