Pteleum

PTE´LEUM


1. （Πτελεόν Eth. Πτελεάτης, Πτελεούσιος, Πτελεεύς), a town of Thessaly, on the south-western side of Phthiotis, and near the entrance of the Sinus Pagasaeus. It stood between Antron and Halos, and was distant from the latter 110 stadia, according to Artemidorus. (Strab. 9. p. 433.) It is mentioned by Homer as governed by Protesilaus, to whom the neighbouring town of Antron also belonged. ( Il. 2.697.) In B.C. 192, Antiochus landed at Pteleum in order to carry on the war against the Romans in Greece (Liv. 35.43). In B.C. 171, the town, having been deserted by its inhabitants, was destroyed by the consul Licinius. (Liv. 42.67.) It seems never to have recovered from this destruction, as Pliny speaks of Pteleum only as a forest ( nemus Pteleon,Plin. Nat. 4.8. s. 15). The form Pteleos is used by Lucan (Luc. 6.352) and Mela (2.3). Pteleum stood near the modern village of Pteleó, or Ftelió, upon a peaked hill crowned by the remains of a town and castle of the middle ages, called Old Ftélio. On its side is a large marsh, which, as Leake observes, was probably in the more flourishing ages of Greece a rich and productive meadow, and hence the epithet of λεχεποίην, which Homer (l. c.) has applied to Pteleum. (Leake, Northern Greece, vol. 1. p. 341, seq.)


2. A town of Triphylia, in Elis, belonging to Nestor (Hom. Il. 2.594), is said by Strabo to have been a colony from the Thessalian Pteleum. This town had disappeared in Strabo's time; but its uninhabited woody site was still called Pteleasimum. (Strab. viii. pp. 349, .350.)


3. A fortress in the territory of Erythrae, in Ionia. (Thuc. 8.24, 31.) Pliny (Plin. Nat. 5.29. s. 31) mentions Pteleon, Helos, and Dorium as near Erythrae, but those places are confused by Pliny with the Triphylian towns in Homer (l. c.).