LILAEA
LILAEA (
Λιλαια: Eth.
Λιλαιεύς), a town of Phocis, situated at the foot of Mount Parnassus, and at the sources of the Cephissus. (
Hom. Il.. 2.522,
Hymn. in Apoll. 240; Strab. ix. pp. 407, 424;
Paus. 9.24.1,
10.33.3;
Stat. Theb. 7.348.)
It was distant from Delphi by the road over Parnassus 180 stadia. (Paus.
l.c. ) It is not mentioned by Herodotus (
8.31) among the towns destroyed by the Persians; whence we may conjecture that it belonged at that time to the Dorians, who made their submission to Xerxes. (Leake,
Northern Greece, vol. ii. p. 90.)
It was destroyed at the end of the Sacred War; but was soon afterwards restored.
It was taken by Demetrius, but subsequently threw off the Macedonian yoke. Pausanias saw at Lilaea a theatre, an agora, and baths, with temples of Apollo and Artemis, containing statues of Athenian workmanship and of Pentelic marble. (
Paus. 10.33.4; see also 10.3.1, 10.8.10; Lycophr. 1073;
Steph. B. sub voce The ruins of Lilaea, called
Paleókastro, are situated about half a mile from the sources of the Cephissus.
The entire circuit of the fortification exists, partly founded on the steep descent of a rocky hill, while the remainder encompasses a level space at its foot, where the ground is covered with ruins. Some of the towers on the walls are almost entire.
The sources of the Cephissus, now called
Kefalovrýses (
Κεφαλοβρύσεις), are said by Pausanias very often to issue from the earth, especially at midday, with a noise resembling the roaring of a bull; and Leake found, upon inquiry, that though the present natives had never made any such observation at
Kefalovrýses, yet the water often rises suddenly from the ground in larger quantities than usual, which cannot but be accompanied with some noise. (Dodwell,
Classical Tour, vol. ii. p. 133; Leake,
Northern Greece, vol. ii. pp. 71, 84.) Ptolemy (
3.15.15) erroneously calls Lilaea a town of Doris.
