1. Introduction

Anticyra is a country town of approximately three thousand inhabitants, built in a well protected cove. According to Plutarch, in ancient times the cove shared the same name as the city. The modern city is partially built over the ancient settlement, which places serious obstacles for archaeological research. Today Anticyra is one of the westernmost settlements in the district of Boeotia. In Antiquity, however, together with the areas of Distomo, Daulia and Arachova it belonged to the domain of Phocis.

2. Antiquity

According to the traveller and geographer Pausanias (2nd cent. AD), Anticyra should be identified with the Homeric settlement of Cyparissus, whence the fleet of the Phocians sailed for Aulis and then to Troy. At the moment, Mycenaean finds are rather scarce though. These mainly consist in a residence in the megaron type, Late Helladic pottery and a rare ring stone bearing the representation of a ship. The mythological tradition surrounding the eponymous founder of the city, Cyparissus, apparently connects Anticyra with the kingdom of the Minyans, making him the son of Minyas and brother of Orchomenus.

According to another version, the founder of the city was Anticyreus, a contemporary of Hercules; he healed the demigod hero of the frenzy that was consuming him by administering hellebore. Hellebore, an herb growing in the region, nowadays identified as Helleborus Niger or Veratrum Album, played an important part in the fame and probably in the economy of Anticyra. The ancients believed it could cure epilepsy, insanity and depression, and for this reason, already by the Late Classical period, Anticyra was a treatment centre. Its fame was such, that the city’s name was often used as a byword. The phrase “Ἀντικύρας σοῖ δεῖ” and the respective Latin one “Naviget Anticyram” meant ‘you’re a nutcase’.

We do not know much about the city’s early history. An Archaic temple of Athena (first half of the 6th cent. BC) has been unearthed to the southwest of the city and movable finds, mainly pottery, clay and bronze figurines, indicate Anticyra had extensive commercial exchanges with Corinth and later with Athens.

According to Herodotus, Anticyra was not among the cities the Persians burned when they moved towards Delphi after Thermopylae. Together with the other cities of Phocis it participated in the pillaging of the Delphic sanctuary and for this it was razed by Phillip II of Macedon at the end of the Third Sacred War (346 BC). Archaeological and historical evidence, however, suggest the city recovered rather quickly from this blow. This can be seen in the fact that in c. 330 BC the citizens of Anticyra commissioned Praxiteles, the famous Athenian sculptor, to create a statue of Artemis for the Temple of Artemis Eileithyia, which has been located on the northern rocky slope of the Kephale peninsula. Although the statue has not been found, its outline is known from its representation on the city’s bronze coin, dated to the 2nd cent. BC. During the Early Hellenistic period, Anticyra was probably one of the three or four cities in Phocis to have minted coins for the Phocian League; these coins bore the initials of each city (“ΑΝ” for Anticyra).

In the early 3rd cent. BC it appears the inhabitants of the city together with other Phocians helped in repulsing the incursion of Galatian tribes; this is attested in the sepulchral epigram of Aristarchus, which was carved on a stele unearthed at Anticyra.

In Hellenistic times the city’s area became a battlefield where powerful opponents clashed; the city changed hands several times and was devastated. By 245 BC at the latest Anticyra had come under Aetolian control, while in c. 228 BC its control passed to Philip V of Macedon. In 210 BC it was captured by the Roman general Valerius Levinus. Polybius provides a gloomy account of how its population was sold off into slavery. In 208 BC it was recaptured by Philip V, and occupied again by the Romans in 198 BC, following a siege by the general Titus Quinctius Flaminius. Flaminius made the city his naval base, as he had installed his army’s headquarters at Elateia.

In Roman times the city apparently experienced a period of prosperity, partly due to the famed hellebore medicine, but also possibly as a centre of transit trade. When the traveller Pausanias visited the city in the 2nd cent. AD, he found its agora full of bronze statues (several inscribed pedestals of which have been discovered); it also featured two gymnasia and a roofed fountain. One of the gymnasia contained a statue depicting the Olympic champion Xenodamus, who was a distinguished pankration wrestler; the other gymnasium was probably connected to a Hellenistic bathhouse complex found west of the church of Ayios Nickolaos. Apart from the Temple of Artemis which housed Praxiteles’ statue, Pausanias mentioned one more temple within the city, dedicated to Poseidon. This temple featured a bronze statue depicting the god, influenced by a celebrated work of Lysippus; this was placed in the Lechaion harbour at Corinth. According to inscriptions in honour of her priestesses, in Hellenistic and Roman times Anticyra apparently controlled another sanctuary as well, that of Artemis Diktynna, situated on northeast borders of the city with Ambrossus (Ambryssus, modern Distomo). Inscriptions from Delphi dating roughly to the same period accurately define the northwest boundaries of Anticyra, which bordered on the sacred lands of Apollo’s oracle.

3. Late Antiquity – Middle Ages

In the Early Byzantine period, Anticyra was a bishopric; archaeological excavations have unearthed part of a large five-aisled basilica adorned by a well-preserved mosaic floor.
This structure dates to the early or the mid-5th cent., while the mosaic dates to the early 6th century. Several private residences with central courtyards date back to the same period; one of these has been interpreted as an episcopal mansion, while another one features a heated bath. The city’s period of growth came to an abrupt end in the early 7th cent. when an earthquake that struck the region of the northern Corinthian Gulf.

In the following centuries Anticyra became an insignificant fishing village; this is probably the area where saint Luke of Steiris spent part of his ascetic life in the mid-10th century. The remnants of a Byzantine castle and with later Catalan additions situated on the west side of the Kephale peninsula have been identified as the fortified site Port de Aragó, which belonged to the count of Salona Frederic de Aragó. The memory of Anticyra lingered, however, thanks to hellebore, which is mentioned in ancient literature and has thus become part of modern European literature; Luther, Calvin, Giordano Bruno, Erasmus, Montaigne, Rabelais and Immanuel Kant talk of this medicinal herb.

4. Modern era

In the 19th century the fishing village was called Aspro Spiti or Aspra Spitia; the English traveller William Leake was the first to identify it with ancient Anticyra with the help of inscriptional testimonies. The villagers lived off fishing and hunting the Mediterranean seal, as attested by travellers who visited the area. Until the mid-20th century, Anticyra was the harbour of the neighbouring settlement of Desfina, whose inhabitants owned almost all of its olive groves.

In April 1941, the Luftwaffe bombed a hospital ship and two tankers moored in the gulf of Anticyra. During the German Occupation in WWII, Anticyra was one of the bases of the Greek People’s Liberation Navy (ELAN) in the Corinthian Gulf, which carried out significant resistance activities (harassment and sabotage) against the occupation forces. These activities are commemorated by a modern monument depicting two sailors in the city’s central square.

In the 1950s, the Hellenic Air Force created a fuel base in the westernmost cove of the bay of Anticyra; this contributed to the post-war development of the small settlement. Another factor which provided a huge push towards growth was the establishment of the factory of the company ‘Aluminium of Greece’ on the beach called Metochi, opposite Anticyra.

The once small fishing settlement has nowadays become a pleasant seaside country town, which strives to retain its local colour, with large numbers of fishing boats in its harbour and a picturesque stone lighthouse on the breakwater. Especially during the summer the city is bustling with life, as it is the sole outlet to the sea for all of western Boeotia.