PY´RRHICHUS
PY´RRHICHUS (
Πύρριχος), a town of Laconia, situated about the centre of the promontory ending in Cape Taenarum, and distant 40 stadia from the river Scyras.
According to some it derived its name from Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, according to others from Pyrrhicus, one of the Curetes. Silenus was also said to have been brought up here.
It contained temples of Artemis Astrateia and of Apollo Amazonius,--the two surnames referring to the tradition that the Amazons did not proceed further than this place.
There was also a well in the agora.
The ruins of this town have been discovered by the French Commission near the village of
Kávalo, where they found the well of which Pausanias speaks, the torso of a female statue, the remains of baths, and several Roman ruins. Leake observes that the distance of 40 stadia from the Scyras to Pyrrhichus must be measured, not from the mouth of that river, as Boblaye proposes, but from near its sources. Augustus made Pyrrhichus one of the Eleuthero-Laconian towns (
Paus. 3.21.7,
3.25. §§ 1--3; Boblaye,
Récherches, &c. p. 88; Leake,
Peloponnesiaca, p. 174; Curtius,
Peloponnesos, vol. ii. p. 276.)
