KOPAI
Boiotia, Greece.
A city on the N
bank of the former Lake Kopais, now Topolia, to the
NW of the Mycenaean fortress of Gla.
A small town living on the rich pasture lands of the
Kopais and eel-fishing in the Melas river, Kopai made
up one of the 11 Boiotian districts from 447 to 387 and
378 to 338, together with Akraiphia and Chaironeia.
Thereafter it was autonomous in the Boiotian League.
Its territory consisted of all the NE section of the Kopais
up to Cape Phtelio at the foot of Akraiphia, where an
inscription engraved in the rock marks the boundary
of the two territories. At the end of the 4th c. Krates of
Chalkis attempted to drive a tunnel to carry off the
waters of the Kopais to the sea; the beginnings of galleries and a line of well-shafts are still extant. The hill
of Kopai, broken off from the shore of the ancient lake,
is linked to it by a raised causeway some 100 m long;
it formed a peninsula in the dry season and an island
in times of flood. Made of large stone blocks, the causeway was joined to a surrounding wall, part of which is
preserved to the N. To the E of the road, Frazer saw
a broken bit of wall “built of rough and rather small
stones”; to the W the wall was polygonal, made of
roughly bonded stones of different sizes. Nothing can be
seen of it today. The acropolis, on the hilltop, was Underneath the modern village; the walls of the latter contain many ancient stones, architectural blocks, and inscriptions, especially the Church of the Panagia. A
6th c. B.C. relief of an Amazon and a metric epitaph
of the 5th c. are in the Thebes Museum. Kopai had a
Sanctuary to Demeter Tauropolos (the bull is represented on its coins), one to Dionysos, and one to Sarapis. The necropolis is N of the causeway, on the mainland side. No excavations have been carried out at Kopai.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. G. Frazer,
Paus. Des. Gr. (1898)
v 131-32; Geiger in
RE (1922), s.v. Kopai & Kopais
M;
P. Roesch,
Thespies et la Confédération béotienne (1965)
64-65
M; S. N. Koumanoudis,
AAA 2 (1969) 80-83
I; N.
Papahadjis,
Pausaniou Hellados Periegesis, v (1969)
144-45; S. Lauffer,
Deltion 26 (1971)
Chron., 239-45
I;
Th. Spyropoulos,
AAA 6 (1973) 201-14
MI.
P. ROESCH
