Athens Delphi Meteora tour trips start in the Greek capital and run with a host into Thessaly. They cross Roumeli, the old name for Central Greece. The chapters below cover Lake Copais, the Mycenaean fort of Gla, the Cephissus river and ancient Elateia. Lamia, the Spercheios, the Battle of Pharsalus and Karditsa follow, then four short answers. See also Delphi day trip from Athens, Meteora tour from Athens and 4 day classical tour. Wider choices, island and mainland alike, sit under Greece tours.
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What is an Athens Delphi Meteora tour?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour is a trip with a host that starts in the Greek capital. Athens is the largest city of Roumeli, also known as Central Greece. In ancient times, Athens, Thebes and Delphi were its leading city-states.
Roumeli holds more people than any other region of Greece. Its name comes from Rum-eli, a Turkish phrase for the country of the Romans. In that phrase, Romans means the Byzantine Greeks, the Greek-speaking people of the medieval empire. Roumeli counts 4,591,568 residents, and an Athens Delphi Meteora tour sets out from its largest city.
The official Greek name is Stereá Elláda, meaning Continental or Mainland Greece. The Peloponnese is a peninsula, land almost ringed by sea, across the Corinthian Gulf. Roumeli and the Peloponnese together make up the southern section of the Greek mainland. Roumeli sits north of the Peloponnese and south of Thessaly and Epirus.
The Great Amphictyonic League was a union of Greek tribes with twelve founders. Its task was to guard two great temples, one of Apollo at Delphi, one of Demeter. The battles of Marathon, Salamis and Plataea against the Persians took place in Central Greece. In the 2nd century BC, Rome took the larger share of the region.
- Coasts: The home region of an Athens Delphi Meteora tour faces two seas, the Aegean and the Ionian.
- Old name: In earlier times, the region also went by the Greek name Chérsos Ellás.
- Mountains: Roumeli ranks among the mountainous regions of Greece, with peaks among the highest in the land.
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour starts in a region linked with the early Greek name. Homer spoke of the Hellenes as a small tribe at first, settled in Phthia in Thessaly. Hellenes is the word Greeks use for themselves, and Hellas names their country.
How does an Athens Delphi Meteora tour connect with Lake Copais?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour has a Boeotian chapter in Lake Copais, a former lake. It lay in the centre of Boeotia, west of Thebes. Boeotia is a district of Central Greece. Rivers that fed the lake included the Cephissus, the Termessus and the Triton.
In 1865 the Greek government gave a French company a contract to drain the lake. Massive works followed between 1882 and 1886, yet that attempt failed. Organic matter, the leftovers of plants and animals, was set alight on the lake floor. The fire sank the bed about 4 m below the canal.
Bronze Age builders drained part of the lake long before any Athens Delphi Meteora tour. The Bronze Age is the early era of bronze tools. Their canal ran for about 25 km towards natural sinkholes, holes that swallow water, north-east of the basin. The canal split the basin in two and won back land in the southern part.
Myth adds its own account of Lake Copais to an Athens Delphi Meteora tour. A writer named Polyaenus says the hero Heracles flooded the area while fighting the Minyans of Orchomenus. The Minyans were dangerous fighters on horseback. Heracles made the lake to unhorse them, which means to knock riders off their horses.
- Earth moved: Bronze Age dam builders shifted roughly 200,000,000 cubic metres of earth.
- Collapse: The ancient system collapsed in the Late Helladic period, a late stage of the Bronze Age.
- Roman try: One of two Roman attempts to drain the lake is credited to the Emperor Hadrian.
Another story places a flood in the mythical age of Ogyges. In that tale, the lake overflowed and caused the Ogygian deluge, a vast flood. On an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, Kopaida names the flat dry land left by the lake.
On an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, what does Gla add?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour gains a fortress story from Gla, an important Mycenaean site in Boeotia. Mycenaean refers to the Greek palace culture of the late Bronze Age. The fortification on the hill at Gla dates from around 1300 BC.
The site’s ancient name remains unknown. Homer’s epic, the Iliad, never mentions Gla. Local people call the site Palaiokastro, meaning ancient fortress. For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, the name Gla comes from goulas, an Arvanitic word. Arvanitic is a form of Albanian, and goulas comes from the Turkish kulle, a tower.
Gla sits on a limestone outcrop that jutted into Lake Kopais or formed an island in it. An outcrop is a mass of rock that stands out from the ground. The flat top rises up to 38 m above the land around it. Its walls, about 3 m thick, ran for 2.8 km around the hill.
Much of the ground inside the walls stayed empty. Archaeologists link that space with a refuge for Kopais farmers during attacks. Large amounts of burnt grain turned up in one building. The walls enclose nearly 20 hectares, about 10 times the Mycenaean citadel of Athens. Athens is where an Athens Delphi Meteora tour starts.
- Gates: The fort had four gates, an unusually high number for a Mycenaean stronghold.
- Roof tiles: Finds of fired pan and cover tiles hint at pitched, tiled roofs in Mycenaean times.
- Food store: Experts suggest the land ruled from Gla fed the Mycenaean world as its bread basket.
Human life at Gla did not end with the Mycenaean age. Finds there include pots from Neolithic and Byzantine times. Neolithic marks the late Stone Age, when farming began. For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, Gla shows no settlement in the Archaic, Classical or Roman periods.
For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, which river story does the Cephissus tell?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour finds a river story in the Boeotian Cephissus, a river of central Greece. The word Boeotian sets it apart from other rivers bearing that name. It rises at Lilaia in Phocis, where Mount Parnassus slopes to the north-west.
In the land of an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, the Cephissus basin covers 1,958 square kilometres. A river basin is all the land that drains into one river. The Cephissus flows east through the Boeotian plain, past Amfikleia, Kato Tithorea and Orchomenos. It once emptied into Lake Copais, so the lake also bore the name Cephisian Lake.
Seasonal melt water supplied the main flow of the river. Melt water comes from melting snow and ice. Lake Copais, the first lake on its course, was never more than a shallow wetland. Draining the lake for farming exposed katabothra, caves in karst ground. Karst is limestone land worn into holes and channels by water.
For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, the Cephissus valley is a strategic corridor. It links northern and southern Greece through the passes of Mount Oeta and Mount Kallidromo. In the Frankish period, rulers of the Duchy of Athens built forts and watchtowers along it. Frankish describes the western crusaders who ruled parts of Greece.
- River god: Greek myth tied the river god Cephissus to this river.
- Cake custom: Pausanias says cakes thrown into its spring at Lilaia rose again in the Castalian Spring.
- Athens water: In the late 20th century, the Athens aqueduct, a supply line, claimed the remaining lake waters.
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour starts in a city with large water needs. Athens had grown to hold one-third of the people of Greece. Deep tunnels therefore brought the capital water from distant rivers, even in western Greece.
Why does Elateia carry weight in an Athens Delphi Meteora tour story?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour story treats Elateia as a key ancient city. In its region, only Delphi ranked above it. Elateia’s people claimed to be Arcadians, named after Elatus, a son of Arcas. Arcadia is a region of the Peloponnese.
Ancient Elateia stood near the middle of a fertile basin nearly 20 miles long. The basin ran from the narrows of the Cephissus to the entrance into Boeotia. A basin is low land ringed by higher ground. Its place guarded the passes into southern Greece from Mount Oeta. That made it a military post of great weight.
Elateia does not appear in Homer, the poet of the Iliad. In 480 BC the Persian army of Xerxes burnt the city with other towns of Phocis. Xerxes was the Persian king who invaded Greece. Philip II of Macedon seized Elateia in 339 BC and began to rebuild its walls.
The seizure caused alarm in Athens, the start of an Athens Delphi Meteora tour. Athenians saw Phocis as a key to southern Greece. Elateia held out against Cassander, a Macedonian ruler, in 301 BC. Romans took it by assault in 198 BC. They later declared it free because it had repulsed an attack in 86 BC.
- Temple of Asclepius: Pausanias, an ancient travel writer, mentions a temple of Asclepius, the healing god, with a beardless statue.
- Athena Cranaea: This temple sat on a small, steep hill and was the one dig there with real success.
- Deep past: The valley of Elateia has been lived in since 6000 BC, ages before any Athens Delphi Meteora tour.
The modern town of Elateia, in south-east Phthiotis, had 2,804 people in 2021. Since 2011 it has been part of the Amfikleia-Elateia municipality. For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, Pausanias placed the city on a gentle slope in the Cephissus plain.
In the story of an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, where does Lamia stand?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour story counts Lamia as a capital city. Lamia leads both Phthiotis and the wider Central Greece region. Phthiotis is a regional unit, a district inside that region. The city itself had 47,529 inhabitants at the 2021 census.
Two accounts explain the name of the city. One ties it to Lamia, a figure of myth and a daughter of the sea god Poseidon. She was also queen of a people called the Trachineans. The other account traces the name to the Malians, who lived in the land around it.
Ancient Lamia lay closer to the sea than the modern city does. That explains a temple to Poseidon nearby. For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, the ancient city also held the narrow coastal plain above Thermopylae. That plain joined southern Greece to Thessaly and the wider Balkans, the peninsula of south-east Europe.
The Lamian War set Athens, home city of an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, against Macedonian rule. The war closed after the death of Leosthenes, an Athenian general. In 1165 the traveller Benjamin of Tudela recorded 50 Jewish families there. Catalan mercenaries, or hired soldiers, held Lamia from 1318 until 1391 and knew it as El Citó.
- Diakos Square: This square holds a statue of Athanasios Diakos, a War of Independence commander who died in Lamia.
- University: The University of Thessaly runs six of its departments in Lamia.
- Farm hub: Lamia serves as the farming centre of a fertile area of crops and livestock.
On an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, Lamia’s peak came in the 3rd century BC, within the Aetolian League. That league was an alliance of Greek states. Records show a bishop seated in the city from the year 431.
Which legends tie an Athens Delphi Meteora tour to the Spercheios river?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour story links the Spercheios river with Greek myth. Ancient Greeks worshipped the river as a god. The Spercheios flows through Phthiotis, a district of central Greece. It runs for 80 km from its source to the sea.
In Homer’s Iliad, the river is the father of Menesthius, an officer under Achilles. Achilles is the leading Greek hero of the Trojan War. The mother of Menesthius was Polydora, half-sister of Achilles. For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, one tradition also makes Dryops, king of Oeta, their son.
For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, Ainis is the ancient name of the upper river valley. A surviving fragment of a play by Aeschylus calls the river a place for cattle. Aeschylus was an Athenian writer of tragedies. The fragment comes from his lost play Philoctetes and is quoted in The Frogs, a comedy.
Its source lies in the Tymfristos range, on the Evrytania border. From there it runs east into a wide plain, past the towns of Makrakomi and Leianokladi. It passes south of Lamia, the capital of Phthiotis. Its mouth opens into the Malian Gulf of the Aegean Sea, 13 km south-east of Lamia.
- Farmland: The river crosses former wetlands, now drained and turned into farmland.
- Hellebore: Antikyra, at the river mouth in antiquity, was famed for black and white hellebore, a flowering plant.
- Moving coast: Fine river mud, or silt, has slowly filled the Malian Gulf and widened Thermopylae into a plain.
In Latin the river is the Spercheus. Latin was the tongue of the ancient Romans. Studies have examined its hydrological regime, the pattern of rise and fall in its water. On an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, the Spercheios drains an area of 1,830 square kilometres.
For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, how does the Battle of Pharsalus link to Rome?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour story reaches Roman history through the Battle of Pharsalus. It was the deciding clash of Caesar’s Civil War. Fighting took place on 9 August 48 BC near Pharsalus. A civil war pits groups of one state against each other.
Julius Caesar and his allies faced the forces of the Roman Republic, led by Pompey. The Roman Republic was the Roman state before the age of the emperors. Pompey had the support of a majority of Roman senators. His army was much larger than the veteran legions of Caesar. A legion was a big Roman army unit.
For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, the exact battlefield was long a matter of debate among scholars. Four ancient writers place it at Palaepharsalus, which means Old Pharsalus. The scholar John D. Morgan favours a hill just east of the village of Krini. That spot lies about 9.7 km north of Pharsalus.
On an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, the battle’s name has a history of its own. Caesar called it the proelium in Thessalia, Latin for battle in Thessaly. The poet Lucan used the name Pharsalia in his poem on the civil war. A number of scholars hold that Pharsalia is the more accurate name.
- Retreat: Before the battle, Caesar withdrew east into Thessaly after a setback at Dyrrachium.
- Caesar’s men: By Caesar’s own count, his army held 22,000 Roman legionaries, or foot soldiers.
- Horsemen: Pompey fielded between 5,000 and 7,000 cavalry, soldiers who fought on horseback.
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour story ties this battlefield to the hero Achilles as well. Near Old and New Pharsalus stood a Thetideion, a temple to Thetis. In Greek myth, Thetis was a sea goddess and the mother of Achilles.
Which figures from Karditsa does an Athens Delphi Meteora tour story recall?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour story gains famous names from Karditsa. The city lies in western Thessaly. It leads the Karditsa regional unit as both its capital and its largest city. At the 2021 census, 40,272 people lived within the city limits.
Two leading figures of Greek history came from Karditsa, a city of the Athens Delphi Meteora tour region. Georgios Karaiskakis, a military commander, ranked among the leaders of the Greek War of Independence. Nikolaos Plastiras served Greece as a general, a politician and prime minister. Karditsa is also the birthplace and childhood home of Seraphim, archbishop of Athens.
Sport adds further names to an Athens Delphi Meteora tour story. The tennis player Stefanos Tsitsipas is linked with Karditsa. So is Dimosthenis Tampakos, a gymnast who won Olympic gold. A gymnast performs moves of strength and balance on bars, rings and mats. The wrestler Konstantinos Thanos also won an Olympic medal.
Under Ottoman rule, the main settlement on the site of modern Karditsa was called Sotira. The Ottoman Empire was a Turkish state that held Thessaly at the time. In 1810 the English traveller William Martin Leake described a sprawling village named Kardhítza. It had between 500 and 600 houses.
- Old quarter: Karditsa once had a neighbourhood called Vlachomachalas, home to Vlachs, also known as Aromanians.
- Veterinary school: The city hosts one of the two departments of veterinary medicine in Greece.
- Six communities: The municipal unit of Karditsa divides into six local communities.
The wider municipality counted 55,979 people at the 2021 census. It took shape in 2011, when five former municipalities merged into one. For an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, Karditsa also holds four departments of the University of Thessaly.
What do travellers ask about Athens Delphi Meteora tour, and what are the answers?
An Athens Delphi Meteora tour links Athens with the central mainland of Greece. Travellers ask about four names there: Phthiotis, Amfikleia, Domokos and Lake Yliki. The two towns belong to Phthiotis, a district of Central Greece, while the lake belongs to Boeotia.
Before an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, what is Phthiotis?
Phthiotis is a regional unit of Roumeli, inside the administrative region of Central Greece. A regional unit forms a layer of government between a region and its towns. Its name goes back to Homeric Phthia, famed as the homeland of Achilles. Today Phthiotis divides into 7 municipalities, and its capital is Lamia.
On an Athens Delphi Meteora tour, what was Amfikleia called before 1915?
Before 1915 the town bore the name Dadi, and that year it became Amfikleia. It lies below the north side of Mount Parnassus, in the Cephissus valley. In the 2nd century AD, ancient Amphicleia was known for the worship of Dionysus. Dionysus was the Greek god of wine.
What ancient name does Domokos carry for an Athens Delphi Meteora tour?
In antiquity, Domokos was the town of Thaumacus, also called Thaumace. Evliya Çelebi, an Ottoman travel writer, described its castle after a visit in 1668. He mentions around a hundred tiled houses. Domokos became Greek territory in 1881, as the Ottoman Empire handed over Thessaly and nearby lands.
Why does Lake Yliki matter to Athens on an Athens Delphi Meteora tour?
Lake Yliki is a large natural lake of Boeotia, 8 km north of Thebes. Its surface lies 78 m above sea level. Since 1958 it has served as a key drinking water source for greater Athens. The lake is also home to threatened fish found almost nowhere else, such as the Yliki roach.