PI´ERES
Eth.
PI´ERES (
Πίερες), a Thracian people, occupying the narrow strip of plain land, or low hill, between the mouths of the Peneius and the Haliacmon, at the foot of the great woody steeps of Olympus. (
Thuc. 2.99;
Strab. vii. p.331,
Fr. 22, ix. p. 410;
Liv. 44.9.)
This district, which, under the name of
PIERIA or PIERIS (
Πιερία, Πιερίς), is mentioned in the Homeric poems (
Il. 14.225), was, according to legend, the birthplace of the Muses (Hesiod.
Theog. 53) and of Orpheus, the father of song. (Apoll.
Argon. 1.23.) When this worship was introduced into Boeotia, the names of the mountains, grots, and springs with which this poetic religion was connected, were transferred from the N. to the S.
Afterwards the Pieres were expelled from their original seats, and driven to the N. beyond the Strymon and Mount Pangaeus, where they formed a new settlement. (
Hdt. 7.112; Thuc.
l.c.) The boundaries which historians and geographers give to this province vary.
In the systematic geography of Ptolemy (
3.13.15) the name is given to the extent of coast between the mouths of the Ludias and the Haliacmon. Pieria was bounded on the W. from the contiguous district of the Thessalian Perrhaebia by the great chain of Olympus.
An offshoot from Olympus advances along the Pierian plain, in a NW. direction, as far as the ravine of the Haliacmon, where the mountains are separated by that chasm in the great eastern ridge of Northern Greece from the portion of it anciently called Bermius.
The highest summit of the Pierian range called PIERUS MONS (
Plin. Nat. 4.15; comp.
Paus. 9.29.3;
10.13.5) rises about 8 miles to the N. of
Vlakholivadho, and is a conspicuous object in all the country to the E.
It would seem that there was a city called
PIERIA (
Πιερία: Eth.
Πιεριώτης, Eth.
Πιερίτης, [p. 2.630]Πιερεύς, Steph. B. sub voce Suid. s. v.
Κρίτων), which may be represented by a “tumulus,” overgrown with trees upon the extremity of the ridge of
Andreótissa, where it ends in a point between Dium and Pydna, the other two chief cities of Pieria. Beyond Pydna was a considerable forest, called “Pieria Silva” (
Liv. 44.43), which may have furnished the Pierian pitch, which had such a high reputation. (
Hdt. 4.195;
Plin. Nat. 14.25.)
The road from Pella to Larissa in Thessaly passed through Pieria [MACEDONIA, Vol. II. p. 237a.], and was probably the route which the consul Q. Marcius Philippus pursued in the third and fourth years of the Persic War. (
Liv. 44.1-
10; Leake,
Northern Greece, vol. iii. pp. 177, 210, 337, 413, 446.)
[
E.B.J]
