Listed 4 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "HERAKLION Ancient city CRETE".
A small city on N coast of Crete. The city is barely mentioned by
ancient sources other than geographers. Together with and eventually superseding
Amnisos, it served as the port of Knossos which lay 5 km inland (Strab. 10.4.7;
10.5.1; cf. Ptol. 3.15.3; Stad. 348-49). The location of ancient Herakleion has
been much debated, but Platon has solved the main problem which lay in a reference
in Pliny (HN 4.12.59): the name Matium results from a misunderstanding by Pliny,
and ancient Herakleion does lie under modern Iraklion, once called Candia.
Slight epigraphic evidence shows that the city was a satellite of
Knossos in the Hellenistic period. No coins are certainly known.
At Katsaba in E Iraklion by the mouth of the Katsaba (ancient Kairatos),
which flows past Knossos, are Neolithic remains and a considerable Minoan site.
The later city seems to have been under the modern city center, but little is
known of its plan: scattered remains, mainly of tombs, have been found of the
Geometric period to 7th c. A.D.
D. J. Blackman, 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 1 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
On the north shore of Crete
was an ancient city called Heracleion. The Greeks still give the name of Heracleion
to a city built by the Arabs in 825 near the site of the ancient city; the Arabian
name was Khandak, whence the Italian name Candia is used also for the whole island.
In 960 Candia was taken by Nicephorus Phocas. In 1204 it passed to
the Venetians and in 1669 to the Turks. There are remains of its ancient walls
and aqueduct, also a museum of antiquities. Under the Venetian occupation Crete
was divided into eleven Latin sees, Candia being the seat of an archbishopric.
The hierarchy disappeared with the Turkish conquest. In 1874 Pius IX re-established
the See of Candia, as a suffragan of Smyrna.
S. Petrides, ed.
Transcribed by: Gerald M. Knight
This extract is cited June 2003 from The Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent online edition URL below.
Herakleion. A place in Crete, which Strabo calls the port of Cnossus, was situated, according to the anonymous coast-describer (Stadiasm.), at a distance of 20 stadia from that city. The name Heracleia (Herakleia, comp. Plin. iv. 20) is simply mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium as the 17th of the 23 Heracleias he enumerates. Although the ecclesiastical notices make no mention of this place as a bishop's see, yet there is found among the subscriptions to the proceedings of the General Seventh Council held at Nicaea, along with other Cretan prelates, Theodoros, bishop of Heracleopolis. Mr. Pashley has fixed the site at a little rocky hill to the W. of Kakou-oros. There are remains of buildings, probably of no earlier date than the Venetian conquest, but the position agrees with the indications of the ancients.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited June 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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