Polichna

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography

POLICHNA(Πολίχνα).

1. A town of Laconia, mentioned only by Polybius (Plb. 4.36), is placed by Leake in the interior of the country on the eastern slope of Mt. Parnon at Réonda(Τὰ Ῥέοντα), where, among the ruins of a fortified town of the lower empire, are some remains of Hellenic walls. (Leake, Peloponnesiaca, p. 364.)


2. A town in the NW. of Messenia on the road from Andania to Dorium and Cyparissia. (Paus. 4.33.6.) [DORIUM]


3. A town of Megaris, mentioned only in a line of Homer, quoted by Strabo, for which the Athenians substituted another to prove that Salamis at the time of the Trojan War was a dependency of Athens. (Strab. 9. p. 394.)


4. ( Eth. Πολιχνίτης), a town of Crete, whose territory bordered upon that of Cydonia. (Thuc. 2.85.) In B.C. 429 the Athenians assisted the inhabitants of Polichna in making war upon the Cydonians. (Thuc. l. c.) Herodotus also mentions the Polichnitae, and says that this people and the Praesii were the only people in Crete who did not join the other Cretans in the expedition against Camicus in Sicily in order to revenge the death of Minos (7.170; Steph. B. s. v.). Cramer ( Ancient Greece, vol. 3. p. 380) supposes the ruins at PólisS. of Armyroto be those of Polichna, which Pashley, however, regards as those of Lappa or Lampa. (Crete, vol. 1. p. 83.)