---

Modern Description: The road reaches the coast at Vaterá (52km from Mytilene), whose long, sandy, south-facing strand curves towards a promontory to the west, marked by the modern church of Aghios Phokás (4km). Beside the church are the remains of the temple of Dionysos Bresagenes, oriented perfectly towards the east and crosswise to the promontory. The remaining elements reveal it to have been of curious design—namely monostyle, in antis: the two massive marble antae and the one fluted column of its porch, placed equidistant between them, have been reerected.
Some of the paving where the cult statue would have stood is still visible in the interior. In Antiquity the temple and its headland, which would have been visible from afar, constituted the principal landmark between the entrances to the two gulfs, and on the journey between Mytilene and Eresos. The waters south of here are home to both the common and bottlenose dolphins which are sometimes to be seen from this headland. Arion, the 7th century BC musician, poet and citharode, was from Lesbos (Methymna); it was by the intervention of one such dolphin that his life was supposedly saved when he was thrown overboard on his journey back from Sicily.
Wikidata ID: Q115674398

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

---