Peloponnesus in the context of "Heracleidae"

The Battle of Plataea was the final land battle during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place in 479 BC near the city of Plataea in Boeotia, and was fought between an alliance of the Greek city-states (including Sparta, Athens, Corinth and Megara), and the Achaemenid Empire of Xerxes I (allied with Greek states including Boeotia, Thessalia, and Macedon).

At the preceding Battle of Salamis, the allied Greek navy had won an unlikely but decisive victory, preventing the conquest of the Peloponnesus region. Xerxes then retreated with much of his army, leaving his general Mardonius to finish off the Greeks the following year. In the summer of 479 BC, the Greeks assembled a huge army and marched out of the Peloponnesus. The Persians retreated to Boeotia and built a fortified camp near Plataea. The Greeks, however, refused to be drawn into the prime terrain for cavalry around the Persian camp, resulting in a stalemate that lasted eleven days.

Pagae or Pagai (/ˈpædʒiː/; Doric Greek: Παγαί), or Pegae or Pegai (Ancient Greek: Πηγαί) was a town of ancient Megaris, on the Alcyonian or Corinthian Gulf. According to some sources of greek mythology Pagae had been the home town of Tereus. It was the harbour of Megaris on the western coast, and was the most important place in the country next to the capital. According to Strabo it was situated on the narrowest part of the Megaric isthmus, the distance from Pagae to Nisaea being 120 stadia. When the Megarians joined Athens in 455 BCE, the Athenians garrisoned Pagae, and its harbour was of service to them in sending out an expedition against the northern coast of Peloponnesus. The Athenians retained possession of Pagae a short time after Megara revolted from them in 454 BCE; but, by the thirty years' truce made in the same year, they surrendered the place to the Megarians. At one period of the Peloponnesian War (424 BCE) we find Pagae held by the aristocratical exiles from Megara. Pagae continued to exist until a late period, and under the Roman emperors was a place of sufficient importance to coin its own money. Strabo calls it τὸ τῶν Μεγαρέων φρούριον. Pausanias visited in the 2nd century and saw there a chapel of the hero Aegialeus, who fell at Glisas in the second expedition of the Argives against Thebes, but who was buried at this place. He also saw near the road to Pagae, a rock covered with marks of arrows, which were supposed to have been made by a body of the Persian cavalry of Mardonius, who in the night had discharged their arrows at the rock under the impulse of Artemis, mistaking it for the enemy. In commemoration of this event, there was a brazen statue of Artemis Soteira at Pagae. From 193 BCE Pagae was a member of the Achaean League. Pagae is also mentioned in other ancient sources, including Ptolemy, Stephanus of Byzantium, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Hierocles, and the Tabula Peutingeriana, where it is called Pache.

Its site is located near the modern Alepochori. Remains of the city walls can be seen today.

Hippotes (Ancient Greek: Ἱππότης) may refer to a number of people from Greek mythology:

• Hippotes, son of Mimas and father of Aeolus, the keeper of the Winds in the Odyssey. He was a mortal king.
• Hippotes, a Corinthian prince as the son of King Creon, who accused Medea of the murder she had committed on his sister and his father. His persona was assumed by Medeus, son of Jason or Aegeus and Medea, when he came to the court of King Perses of Colchis.
• Hippotes, a son of Phylas by Leipephilene, daughter of Iolaus, and great-grandnephew and great-grandson of Heracles. When the Heracleidae, on their invading the Peloponnesus, were encamped near Naupactus, Hippotes killed the seer Carnus, in consequence of which the army of the Heracleidae began to suffer very severely, and Hippotes by the command of an oracle was banished for a period of ten years. He was likely the same Hippotes who was the father of Aletes. He seems to be the same as the Hippotes who was regarded as the founder of Cnidus in Caria.

Phlius (/ˈflaɪəs/; Ancient Greek: Φλιοῦς) or Phleius (Φλειοῦς) was an independent polis (city-state) in the northeastern part of Peloponnesus. Phlius' territory, called Phliasia (Φλιασία), was bounded on the north by Sicyonia, on the west by Arcadia, on the east by Cleonae, and on the south by Argolis. This territory is a small valley about 900 feet (270 m) above the level of the sea, surrounded by mountains, from which streams flow down on every side, joining the river Asopus in the middle of the plain. The mountain in the southern part of the plain, from which the principal source of the Asopus springs, was called Carneates (Καρνεάτης). The territory of Phlius was celebrated in antiquity for its wine. According to Strabo, the ancient capital of the country was Araethyrea (Ἀραιθυρέα) on Mt. Celosse, which city is mentioned by Homer; but the inhabitants subsequently deserted it and built Phlius at the distance of 30 stadia. Pausanias, however, does not speak of any migration, but says that the ancient capital was named Arantia (Ἀραντία), from its founder Aras, an autochthon, that it was afterwards called Araethyrea from a daughter of Aras, and that it finally received the name of Phlius, from Phlias, a son of Ceisus and grandson of Temenus. The name of Arantia was retained in the time of Pausanias in the hill Arantinus, on which the city stood. Hence the statement of grammarians that both Arantia and Araethyrea were ancient names of Phlius. According to Stephanus of Byzantium, Phlius derived its name from Dionysus and Chthonophyle. Phlius was subsequently conquered by Dorians under Rhegnidas, who came from Sicyon. Some of the inhabitants migrated to Samos, others to Clazomenae; among the settlers at Samos was Hippasus, from whom Pythagoras derived his descent.

Like most of the other Doric states, Phlius was governed by an aristocracy, though it was for a time subject to a tyrant Leon, a contemporary of Pythagoras. Phlius sent 200 soldiers to the Battle of Thermopylae, and 1000 to the Battle of Plataea. Although geographically close to Argos, it was an ally of Sparta and a member of the Peloponnesian League. During the whole of the Peloponnesian War it remained faithful to Sparta and hostile to Argos.

Elis (Ancient Greek: Ἦλις, Doric Greek: Ἆλις, in the local dialect: Ϝᾶλις, Modern Greek: Ήλιδα, romanized: Elida) was the capital city of the ancient polis (city-state) of Elis, in ancient Greece. It was situated in the northwest of the Peloponnese, to the west of Arcadia. Just before the Peneius emerges from the hills into the plain, the valley of the river is contracted on the south by a projecting hill of a peaked form, and nearly 500 feet (150 m) in height. This hill was the acropolis of Elis, and commanded as well the narrow valley of the Peneius as the open plain beyond. The ancient city lay at the foot of the hill, and extended across the river, as Strabo says that the Peneius flowed through the city; but since no remains are now found on the right or northern bank, it is probable that all the public buildings were on the left bank of the river, more especially as Pausanias does not make any allusion to the river in his description of the city.

Elis is mentioned as a town of the Epeii by Homer in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad; but in the earliest times the two chief towns in the country appear to have been Ephyra the residence of Augeias, in the interior, and Buprasium on the coast. Some writers suppose that Ephyra was the more ancient name of Elis, but it appears to have been a different place, situated upon the Ladon. Elis first became a place of importance upon the invasion of Peloponnesus by the Dorians. Oxylus and his Aetolian followers appear to have settled on the height which later formed Elis's acropolis as the spot best adapted for ruling the country. From this time it was the residence of the kings, and of the aristocratic families who governed the country after the abolition of royalty. Elis was the only fortified town in the country; the rest of the inhabitants dwelt in unwalled villages, paying obedience to the ruling class at Elis.

The history of Sparta describes the history of the ancient Doric Greek city-state known as Sparta from its beginning in the legendary period to its incorporation into the Achaean League under the late Roman Republic, as Allied State, in 146 BC, a period of roughly 1000 years. Since the Dorians were not the first to settle the valley of the Eurotas River in the Peloponnesus of Greece, the preceding Mycenaean and Stone Age periods are described as well. Sparta went on to become a district of modern Greece. Brief mention is made of events in the post-classical periods.

Dorian Sparta rose to dominance in the 6th century BC. At the time of the Persian Wars, it was the recognized leader by assent of the Greek city-states. It subsequently lost that assent through suspicion that the Athenians were plotting to break up the Spartan state after an earthquake destroyed Sparta in 464 BC. When Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War, it secured an unrivaled hegemony over southern Greece. Sparta's supremacy was broken following the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. It was never able to regain its military superiority and was finally absorbed by the Achaean League in the 2nd century BC.

Sicyon (/ˈsɪʃiˌɒn, ˈsɪs-/; Greek: Σικυών; gen.: Σικυῶνος) or Sikyōn was an ancient Greek city state situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth and Achaea on the territory of the present-day regional unit of Corinthia. The ruins lie just west of the modern village of Sikyona (previously Vasiliko). An ancient monarchy at the times of the Trojan War, the city was ruled by a number of tyrants during the Archaic and Classical period and became a democracy in the 3rd century BC. Sicyon was celebrated for its contributions to ancient Greek art, producing many famous painters and sculptors. In Hellenistic times it was also the home of Aratus of Sicyon, the leader of the Achaean League.

In Greek mythology, Cresphontes (/krɛsˈfɒntiːz/; Ancient Greek: Κρεσφόντης) was a son of Aristomachus, husband of Merope, father of Aepytus and brother of Temenus and Aristodemus. He was a great-great-grandson of Heracles and helped lead the fifth and final attack on Mycenae in the Peloponnesus. He became king of Messene.

Cresphontes and his brothers complained to the oracle that its instructions had proved fatal to those who had followed them (the oracle had told Hyllus to attack through the narrow passage when the third fruit was ripe). They received the answer that by the "third fruit" the "third generation" was meant, and that the "narrow passage" was not the isthmus of Corinth, but the straits of Rhium. They accordingly built a fleet at Naupactus, but before they set sail, Aristodemus was struck by lightning (or shot by Apollo) and the fleet destroyed, because one of the Heraclidae had slain an Acarnanian soothsayer.