Lilaea
nymphA Naiad nymph of the spring that feeds the river Cephissus in Phocis, and the namesake of an ancient Greek town.
The Myth
Lilaea was a daughter of the river god Cephissus, and she presided over the spring from which her father's river rose, high in the mountains of Phocis near Parnassus. The town built around that spring took her name — Lilaea, mentioned by Homer in the Iliad's Catalogue of Ships as one of the towns that sent men to fight at Troy.
The spring of Lilaea was considered one of the wonders of central Greece. Pausanias described visiting it in the second century CE, noting how the water surged from the rock face with considerable force. The townspeople told him that when the Cephissus flooded downstream, the spring at Lilaea would also rise, as if the nymph and her father breathed together.
Lilaea is one of those nymphs who existed at the intersection of mythology and geography. She was not a character in any dramatic narrative. She was simply the spirit of a specific place — a cold, clear spring in the mountains. The town of Lilaea survived into the Roman period before declining, but the spring still flows, unnamed now except in scholarly footnotes.
Parents
Cephissus (river god)
Symbols
Fun Fact
Homer mentions the town of Lilaea in the Iliad — making this spring nymph one of the few such figures to appear in the oldest surviving work of Western literature.
Explore Further
Catalogue of Ships
conceptThe extensive listing of Greek contingents and their leaders in Book 2 of the Iliad, naming 29...
Cephissus
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Troy
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