Aipy or Aepy (Ancient Greek: Αἶπυ) was a city in ancient Elis, Greece.[1] It was one of the oldest towns in Elis, mentioned by Homer in the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad, as one of the territories ruled by Nestor.[2] Homer uses the expression "ἐΰκτιτον Αίπυ" (ἐΰκτιτον means "well-built" and Αίπυ, the town's name, means "steep").[3] It is also quoted in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo.[4] There are those who believe that the name corresponds to the toponym A-pu2 cited in tablets in Linear B.[5]
Its location is a mystery, which has occupied minds since at least the time of Strabo, who commented it could be considered that Aipy should be identified with a city called Margana or with a natural bastion located near Makistos.[6] It may the same as the later Epeium, a town of Triphylia, which was located on a mountain, between Macistus and Heraea.[1] The site of Epeium is tentatively identified with a site near Tripiti.[7][8] Others suggest that Aipy was the later Typaneae, and locate its site between the present villages Platiana and Makistos (both in the municipal unit of Skillounta), where a wall of the ancient acropolis survives into the present, together with a theatre and an agora (market), now entirely in ruins.[9]
References
- 1 2
Smith, William, ed. (1854–1857). "Aepy". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray. - ↑ Homer. Iliad. Vol. 2.592.
- ↑ Juan José Torres Esbarranch (2001). Estrabón, Geografía libros VIII-X (in Spanish). Madrid: Gredos. p. 74, n. 207. ISBN 84-249-2298-0.
- ↑ Homeric Hymn to Apollo 423.
- ↑ José García Blanco; Luis M Macía Aparicio, eds. (1991). Homero, Iliad (in Spanish). Madrid: CSIC. p. 77, & note.
- ↑ Strabo. Geographica. Vol. 8.3.24. Page numbers refer to those of Isaac Casaubon's edition.
- ↑ Lund University. Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire.
- ↑ Richard Talbert, ed. (2000). Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton University Press. p. 58, and directory notes accompanying.
- ↑ Πλατιανα