Lilybaeum
The westernmost promontory of Sicily, near where Odysseus encountered the land of the dead in some traditions.
The Story of Lilybaeum
Lilybaeum at the western tip of Sicily lay at the edge of the world as Greeks knew it. Some ancient geographers and mythographers placed Odysseus's journey to the land of the dead in these waters rather than in the Black Sea region — the western Mediterranean being the older mythological frontier. The area was associated with Eryx, a son of Aphrodite and Butes (or Poseidon), a wrestling champion who held a sanctuary and city on a mountain overlooking the cape. Heracles wrestled and killed Eryx here on his way back from obtaining Geryon's cattle.
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A distant African kingdom mentioned in Greek mythology as the land at the source of the Nile, associated with the Ethiopians.
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A region of northwestern Greece (Epirus) associated with the oracle of Dodona and the earliest Greek mythology.
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A promontory at the southern tip of the Peloponnese believed to contain an entrance to the underworld
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A fertile central Greek region whose name means "ox-land," birthplace of Heracles and setting of the Cadmus myth.
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A mountainous region in northwestern Greece, home to the Oracle of Dodona and the legendary kingdom of the Molossians.
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The ancient Greek name for the entire continent of Africa, personified as a daughter of Epaphus and Memphis
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The region at the foot of Mount Olympus sacred to the Muses, who were sometimes called the Pierides
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A Phrygian city named after a daughter of a Seleucid king but containing an older sacred tradition of Cybele.
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🏛 placegeography
A Phocian city below Delphi, sometimes confused with Cirrha, associated with Apollo's arrival in central Greece.
Thrace
🏛 placeWild land of Ares and Orpheus
Thrace was the vast, wild region north of Greece — homeland of Ares, Orpheus, the Maenads, and the fearsome warrior tribes the Greeks both feared and respected.
Chersonese
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The narrow Thracian peninsula (modern Gallipoli), site of Protesilaus' sanctuary and Hecuba's transformation.
Thessaly
🏛 placeregion, northern Greece
The largest fertile plain in Greece, legendary homeland of Achilles, the Centaurs, and the Argonauts' leader Jason.