Location information

Minoa

  A small harbor town near Sternes on SE side of Akrotin peninsula, N side of entrance to Suda Bay, opposite Aptera. It is generally thought to have been the second port of Aptera, but from the 3d c. at least it was controlled by Kydonia. It may once have been independent, but since no coins are known, it was probably no longer so by the 4th c. It is mentioned only by geographers (Plin. HN 4.12.59; Ptol. 3.15.5; Stad. 344).
  Remains have been excavated (1939) of a building with 12 rooms, a cistern, and a well (1st-2d c. A.D.) behind a shore embankment and promenade, incorporating much reused material, which run for a further 60 m to the W, with traces of other buildings on the landward side. This is only part of a larger settlement occupying at least the E half of the Marathi valley, and supplied with water by an open aqueduct. Pre-Roman settlement is shown by the reused material. In the hillside bordering the plain on the N, by the rock shelter of Marathospilio, was an important open-air sanctuary (of Diktynna?) from at least archaic to Roman times (Faure).
  An alternative location was suggested by Spratt: Limni, S of Sternes, where on the peninsula enclosing from the S a shallow, almost circular bay there are houses, Classical-Roman sherds and tombs of the Roman period; on the ridge above to the E is a circular tower (lighthouse or watch-tower) of Classical date, connected to the shore by a fortified road 500 m long. A small fishing settlement and probably dependent on the Marathi site, it may possibly have been early Minoa. But it may first have been made into a harbor by the Venetians (Porto Nuovo, 1594).

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 bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.

• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Per...