Listed 2 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "ANAGYRUS Ancient demos VARI".
Just to the E of Cape Zoster and the S end of Mt. Hymettos is a small
plain, in area little more than 3.2 km deep and 1.6 km wide, its limits clearly
marked by the sea to the S, Hymettos to the W, and lesser hills to N and E. Until
recently the plain's center of habitation was at Vari, a town centrally located
at the place where the coastal road from Athens enters the plain on its W edge
through a natural break in the long chain of Hymettos. Today a second, rapidly
expanding, community has been established at the seashore, with the name of Varkiza.
In Classical antiquity this plain was in all probability the deme
of Anagyrous, placed by Strabo in his list of coastal demes after Halai Aixonides
(with a sanctuary at Zoster) but before Thorai (9.1.21), and described by Pausanias
as having as a notable feature a shrine of the Mother of the Gods (1.31.1). While
the position of this last has not been established, no doubt surrounds the location
of the deme-center: It was at Vari, where a great variety of remains have been
unearthed, many illicitly. Even so, the picture they present is one of a city-state
in miniature.
The hill directly W of Van and S of the road from Athens can be considered
the acropolis of Anagyrous. Its peak is fortified by a low rubble wall; within
this enclosure at the summit are traces of a building and perhaps an altar. The
fort was occupied at least in the 5th c. B.C., and would have made an excellent
signaling station. Lower down the hill, on a ridge overlooking the town, is a
group of more than 20 closely set buildings of various shapes--circular, rectangular,
apsidal--from the archaic period, whence was recovered literally thousands of
offerings of terracotta and metal. Some, if not most, of these structures must
have been places of popular worship. In another part of the hill, at the same
level, is the foundation of a small Classical sanctuary. On the hill's lowest
slopes, to the E there are copious remains of walls and building blocks from the
living quarters of the Classical settlement, while to the N, alongside the road
from Athens, is a large cemetery with well preserved grave-terraces of the 5th
and 4th c. B.C.
A second, and more important, cemetery lies a little to the N of Vari,
where graves and grave-enclosures from Late Geometric to late archaic times have
been either excavated or pillaged. From here comes much of the remarkable collection
of early Attic black-figure pottery displayed in the National Museum at Athens.
These funerary offerings, as well as some sculptured monuments originally from
the same area, make it obvious that in the archaic period Vari must have been
home for at least one rich aristocratic family.
A few isolated structures, probably farmhouses, have been noticed
elsewhere in the plain. One of these, on the same slope of Hymettos as the Cave
of the Nymphs but lower, on a spur above a narrow valley entered from the plain,
has been recently excavated. It was a rural villa, of the pastas type, with its
rooms built around three sides of a courtyard and screened by porticos. It had
a short existence, ca. 330-280 B.C.
C.W.J. Eliot, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains 2 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Anagyrus (Anagurous, -ountos: Eth. Anagurasios), a demus of Attica, belonging to the tribe Erechtheis, situated S. of Attica near the promontory Zoster. Pausanias mentions at this place a temple of the mother of the gods. The ruins of Anagyrus have been found near Vari. (Strab. p. 398; Paus. i. 31. § 1; Harpocrat., Suid., Steph. B.; Leake, Demi of Attica, p. 56.)
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited July 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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