Listed 3 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "PYLOS ILIAS Ancient city ILIA".
The name of three towns on the western coast of the Peloponnesus.
(1) In Elis, at the foot of Mount Scollis, and about seventy or eighty stadia
from the city of Elis on the road to Olympia, near the confluence of the Ladon
and the Peneus.
Pylus (Pulos: Eth. Pulios). A town in hollow Elis, described by Pausanias as situated upon the mountain road leading from Elis to Olympia, and at the place where the Ladon flows into the Peneius (vi. 22. § 5). Strabo, in a corrupt passage, assigns to it the same situation, and places it in the neighbourhood of Scollium or Mt. Scollis (metaxu tou PeWeiou kai tou Selleentos ekboles /un>[read kai tes tou Selleentos emboles] Pulos oikeito, Strab. viii. p. 338). Pausanias says that it was 80 stadia from Elis. Diodorus (xiv. 17) gives 70 stadia as the distance, and Pliny (iv. 5. s. 6) 12 Roman miles. According to the previous description, Pylus should probably be identified with the ruins at Agrapidho-khori, situated on a commanding position in the angle formed by the junction of the Peneius and Ladon. This site is distant 7 geographical miles from Elis, which sufficiently agrees with the 80 stadia of Pausanias. Leake, however, places Pylus further S., at the ruins at Kulogli, mainly on the ground that they are not so tar removed from the road between Elis and Olympia. But the fact of the ruins at Agrapidho-khori being at the junction of the Peneius and Ladon seems decisive in favour of that position ; and we may suppose that a road ran up the valley of the Peneius to the junction of the two rivers, and then took a bend to the right into the valley of the Ladon. (Leake, Northern Greece, vol. ii. p. 228, Peloponnesiaca, p. 219; Boblaye, Recherches, &c. p. 122; Curtius, Peloponnesos, vol. ii. p. 39.) The Eleian Pylus is said to have been built by the Pylon, son of Cleson of Megara, who founded the Messenian Pylus, and who, upon being expelled from the latter place by Peleus, settled at the Eleian Pylos. (Paus. iv. 36. § 1, vi. 22. § 5.) Pylus was said to have been destroyed by Hercules, and to have been afterwards restored by the Eleians ; but the story of its destruction by Hercules more properly belongs to the Messenian Pylus. Its inhabitants asserted that it was the town which Homer had in view when he asserted that the Alpheius flowed through their territory (Alpheiou, host' euru rheei Pulion dia gaies, Il. v. 545). On the position of the Homeric Pylus we shall speak presently; and we only observe here, that this claim was admitted by Pausanias (vi. 22. § 6), though its absurdity had been previously pointed out by Strabo (viii. p. 350, seq.). Like the other Eleian towns, Pylus is rarely mentioned in history. In B.C. 402 it was taken by the Spartans, in their invasion of the territory of Elis (Diod. xiv. 17); and in B.C. 366 it is mentioned as the place where the democratical exiles from Elis planted themselves in order to carry on war against the latter city. (Xen. Hell. vii. 4. 16) Pausanias saw only the ruins of Pylus (vi. 22. § 5), and it would appear to have been deserted long previously.
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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