Location information

Petra

PETRA (Ancient city) PIERIA
  A fortress of Macedonia, among the mountains beyond Libethra, the possession of which was disputed by the Thessalian Perrhaebi and the Macedonian kings. (Liv. xxxix. 26, xliv. 32.) It commanded a pass which led to Pythium in Thessaly, by the back of Olympus. By this road L. Aemilius Paullus was enabled to throw a detachment on the rear of the Macedonian army which was encamped on the Enipeus, after the forces of Perseus had been overthrown at the pass of Petra by P. Scipio Nasica, who had been sent against it with the consul's eldest son Q. Fabius Maximus. (Liv. xlv. 41.) Petra was situated on a great insulated rock naturally separated from the adjoining mountain at the pass which leads from Elasona or Servia into the maritime plains of Macedonia. Here, which is at once the least difficult and most direct of the routes across the Olympene barrier, or the frontier between Macedonia and Thessaly, exactly on the Zygos, are the ruins of Petra. (Leake, Northern Greece, vol. iii )

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

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD)
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Per...