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Ancient Pyrassos

Built on the ruins of the ancient city of Pyrassos, of the Achaia Fthiotida. Homer provides us with information about the city, who mentions it in his list of ships (Iliad B695) together with Fylaki and Itona, which belonged to the kingdom of Protessilaos. According to Strabo (IX435), who discusses its topography, Pyrassos was 20 stadia from the contemporary city Fthiotides Theves.

 

In Pyrassos there was the famous temple of Demeter. There is a possibility that it has also been an important religious center of the area. The only excavation which took place in the hill southeast of Nea Anchialos proves that the city has been peopled since the earliest Neolithic period (6th millennium BC) by fishermen-agriculture's, who developed a remarkable civilization.

Pyrassos can only provide us with hypothetical information; an arm from an oversized statue, which came into light in 1965, was attributed to Demeter, the goddess adored by the inhabitants of the city.

 

Maybe the most identical finding is a small piece of an ancient epigraph, discovered in the debris of the big Basilica D' with the name Pyrassos, clear proof that this is the spot where used to be the great city of Protessilaos and Demeter.

 

Pyrassos ends in 217 BC when it was destroyed by Philip V of Macedon.
The destruction of Ancient Pyrassos from the King Philippos the Fifth characterizes the history of era during the antiquity.
 
In this debris developed later a new city, Fthiotides Theves.

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