PANTANASSA
Haghios Vasilios, Crete.
Six
km W of Sybrita, a small fortified Greek city, with a
second larger fortified city just 3 km to the E. Apparently occupied only in Classical and Hellenistic times,
and abandoned before the Roman occupation, the city
was sited on a N slope on the E edge of the Gorge of
Patsos, and covered an area in excess of 2 hectares. On
the E side, and sporadically on the S side, the defense
wall can be seen, built to a width of 1.5 to 2 m. At least
one projecting rectangular tower was built on the E
wall, and there are traces of a corner tower at the S
end of the E wall. At the SW corner of the site, a stretch
of more crudely built wall ending in a semicircular bastion of about 4 m diameter, seems to be a late (?Hellenistic) addition or repair to the original Classical defenses.
Both the city at Pantanassa and that nearby at Veni
would presumably have belonged to the great city of
Sybrita, but whereas Pantanassa saw no Roman occupation, the city at Veni was occupied continuously, it appears, from archaic to Roman times.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J.D.S. Pendlebury,
The Archaeology of
Crete (1939) 340, 349, 369; E. Kirsten in F. Matz,
Forschungen auf Kreta (1951) 151; M.S.F. Hood, P. Warren, & G. Cadogan, “Travels in Crete, 1962,”
BSA 59 (1964) 70-71; M.S.F. Hood & P. Warren, “Ancient Sites in the Province of Ayios Vasilios, Crete,”
BSA 61 (1966) 61
M.
K. BRANIGAN
