Atalanta

ATALANTA(Αταλάντη: Eth. Ἀταλανταῖος.)

1. （ Talandonísi), a small island off Locris, in the Opuntian gulf, said to have been torn asunder from the mainland by an earthquake. In the first year of the Peloponnesian war it was fortified by the Athenians for the purpose of checking the Locrians in their attacks upon Euboea. In the sixth year of the war a part of the Athenian works was destroyed by a great inundation of the sea. (Strab. 1. p. 61, ix. pp. 395, 425; Thuc. 2.32, 3.89; Diod. 12.44, 59; Paus. 10.20.3; Liv. 35.37; Plin. Nat. 2.88, 4.12; Sen. Q. N. 6.24; Steph. B. s. v.;Leake, Northern Greece, vol. 2. p. 172.)


2. A small island off the western coast of Attica, between Salamis and Peiraeeus. (Strab. ix. pp. 395, 425; Steph. B. s. v.)


3. A town in Macedonia, in the upper part of the valley of the Axins. (Thuc. 2.100.) Cramer ( Ancient Greece, vol. 1. p. 230) suggests that the Atalanta of Thucydides is probably the town called Allante by Pliny (Plin. Nat. 4.12), and Stephanus B. (s. v. Ἀλλάντη); the latter says that Theopompus named it Allantium.