AULIS
AULIS (
Αὐλίς: Eth.
Αὐλιδεύς fem. Αὐλιδις), a town of Boeotia, situated on the Euripus, and celebrated as the place at which the Grecian fleet assembled, when they were about to sail against Troy. Strabo says that the harbour of Aulis could only hold fifty ships, and that therefore the Grecian fleet must have assembled in the large port in the neighbourhood, called
Βαθὺς λιμὴν. (
Strab. ix. p.403.) Livy states (45.27) that Aulis was distant three miles from Chalcis. Aulis appears to have stood upon a rocky height, since it is called by Homer (
Hom. Il. 2.303)
Αὐλὶς πετρήεσσα, and by Strabo (
l.c.)
πετρῶδες χωρίον. These statements agree with the position assigned to Aulis by modern travellers. About three miles south of Chaletis on the Boeotian coast are “two bays separated from each other by a rocky peninsula; the northern is small and winding, the southern spreads out at the end of a channel into a large circular basin.
The latter harbour, as well as a village situated a mile to the southward of it, is called
Vathý, a name evidently derived from
Βαθὺς λιμὴν.” (Leake.) We may therefore conclude that Aulis was situated on the rocky peninsula between these two bays.
Aulis was in the territory of Tanagra.
It is called a
κώμη by Strabo.
In the time of Pausanias it had only a few inhabitants, who were potters. Its temple of Artemis, which Agamemnon is said to have founded, was still standing when Pausanias
[p. 1.342]visited the place. (Dicaearch. 88;
Paus. 9.19.6, seq.;
Plin. Nat. 4.7. s. 12; Leake,
Northern Greece, vol. ii. p. 262, seq.; Wordsworth,
Athens and Attica, p. 4, seq.)
