HERAKLEION
(Iraklion) Temenos district, Crete.
A small city on N coast of Crete. The city is
barely mentioned by ancient sources other than geographers. Together with and eventually superseding
Amnisos, it served as the port of Knossos which lay 5
km inland (
Strab. 10.4.7; 10.5.1; cf. Ptol. 3.15.3;
Stad.
348-49). The location of ancient Herakleion has been
much debated, but Platon has solved the main problem
which lay in a reference in Pliny (
HN 4.12.59): the
name Matium results from a misunderstanding by Pliny,
and ancient Herakleion does lie under modern Iraklion,
once called Candia.
Slight epigraphic evidence shows that the city was a
satellite of Knossos in the Hellenistic period. No coins
are certainly known.
At Katsaba in E Iraklion by the mouth of the Katsaba
(ancient Kairatos), which flows past Knossos, are Neolithic remains and a considerable Minoan site. The later
city seems to have been under the modern city center,
but little is known of its plan: scattered remains, mainly
of tombs, have been found of the Geometric period to
7th c. A.D.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
R. Pashley,
Travels in Crete (1837;
repr. 1970) 189-90; T.A.B. Spratt,
Travels and Researches in Crete I (1865) 27ff, 66f; L. Mariani,
MonAnt 6 (1895) 218-22
M; Bürchner, “Herakleion (1),”
RE VIII (1913) 499; M. Guarducci,
Historia 7 (1933)
370-73; N. Platon,
KretChron 1 (1947) 14-21; 5 (1951)
386-87; St. Alexiou,
Praktika (1955) 311-20; id.,
Isterominoikoi taphoi limenos Knosou (Katsaba) (1967); S. G.
Spanakis,
Crete I (n.d.) 117ff
M;
Deltion 20 (1965)
Chronika 3, 562; 21 (1966)
Chronika 2, 408-9; 24
(1969)
Chronika 2, 418-20.
D. J. BLACKMAN
