Eurotas
yoo-ROH-tas
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe river of Sparta, running south through the valley between Taygetus and Parnon.
Pausanias records the tradition that a king called Eurotas drained the standing water of the plain out to sea by cutting a channel, and that the stream left behind took his name.
The sanctuary of Artemis Orthia stood on its bank, which is where the boys were flogged. Almost everything in Spartan life the sources describe happened within sight of this water.
Sources
- Paus. 3.1.1-2
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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