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Modern Description: The greatest and most illustrious city of the Lokrians,' wrote Pausanias. Used as a refuge by the Phokians and Delphians during the Persian invasion of 480, it supported the expedition of the Spartan Eurylochos against Naupaktos in 426. During the Third Sacred War, it sided against the Phokians who had seized Delphi. Accused of sacrilege for having encroached on the Sacred Land, it was the cause of a Fourth Sacred War and was seized by Philip II. In 321, the city resisted the besieging Aitolians and, in 279, joined in defending the Sanctuary of Delphi against the Galates. On becoming part of Aitolia, it successfully resisted the Romans' siege, and was freed from Aitolian rule in 167. After Actium and the founding of Nikopolis, it was inhabited by Aitolian refugees and henceforth claimed to be Aitolian and not Lokrian.
Pausanias saw a Temple of Athena here on the acropolis as well as a bronze statue said to have been brought back from Troy by Thoas; he also noted a cult of the anakes paides -- identified as the Dioskouri or Kouretes or, more reasonably according to Pausanias, the Kabeiroi, seeing that their cult included a telete as well as the tombs of the eponymous hero Amphissos, the nymph Amphissa, the hero Andraimon, the founder of the city, and his wife Gorge. From inscriptions we also know of a cult of Asklepios. Amphissa's calendar differed from that of the other Ozolian cities.
Amphissa has been located with certainty at Salona. There are traces of a powerful rampart that surrounded not only the citadel (where the Frankish castle was set up on its ruins) but also the lower city, up to the stream now called Katsikopniktes; the masonry is of the pseudo-isodomic type characteristic of the 3d c. Lokrian ramparts, but older polygonal blocks were reused in it. The discovery of the manumissions by sale to Asklepios suggests that the sanctuary stood on the S side of the acropolis, near a spring. There are scattered Roman mosaics. Recent salvaging excavations have revealed tombs, the earliest going back to the Geometric period.
Wikidata ID: Q38281545
Trismegistos Geo: 162
Manto: 10274739

Info: Princeton Encyclopedia

(Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, from Perseus Project)

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