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EDIPSOS (Ancient city) EVIA
Aidepsos: Eth. Aidepsios: Lipso. A town on the NW. coast of Euboea, 160 stadia
from Cynus on the opposite coast of the Opuntian Locri. It contained warm baths
sacred to Hercules, which were used by the dictator Sulla. These warm baths are
still found about a mile above Lipso, the site of Aedepsus.
A town of Euboea, famous for its hot baths in ancient as in modern times.
Remains of the ancient site are to be found in the neighborhood of
the modern resort community of Loutra Aidepsou, about 5 km to the S of the town
of Aidepsos in the NW part of the region.
Aidepsos was best known in antiquity for its health-giving thermal
springs, which still flow today. Although legend connected these springs with
Herakles (Strab. 9.4.2), the earliest reference to them in literature belongs
to the 4th c. B.C. (Arist. Meteor. 2.8). Yet it was not until the late Hellenistic
period or early Roman Imperial times that the site came to be widely known as
a health resort. Sulla, seeking relief from gout, is said to have spent a holiday
there (Plut. Sulla 26; cf. also Strab. 10.1.9, where the springs visited by Sulla
are erroneously placed in the Lelantine Plain near Chalkis). By the 2d c. A.D.
it had become an elegant spa frequented by artists, statesmen, and the idle rich--some
in search of a quick cure, but many apparently interested only in a good time
(Plut. Quaest. conv. 4.1 and De frat. amor. 487).
Owing partly to the proximity of the modern resort and partly to the
lack of excavation, little is known of the grand public and private buildings
referred to in our sources. Yet small-scale investigations in the early years
of this century produced remains of a bathing establishment possibly belonging
to the 2d and 3d c. A.D. The finds from this complex, which seems to have drawn
its water from the nearby thermal springs, indicate that it continued to be used
into the Christian period. There is some slight evidence to indicate that the
town was also the source of both copper and iron and the home of a metal-working
industry (Steph. Byz. s.v. Aidepsos). At the site of Khironisi--a headland not
far from modern Aidepsos--crucible fragments, slag, and pieces of malachite and
azurite in quartz (of which one sample contained ca. 15 percent copper and over
5 percent iron) have been found on the surface. Other surface finds indicate that
this site was occupied in Classical and earlier times, thus suggesting an explanation
for the tradition related by Stephanos.
T. W. Jacobsen, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Oct 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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