PLEURON, NEA PLEURON
Greece.
The city is in Aitolia-Akarnania. The name refers to two settlements, the older of which was at the foot of Mt. Kurios (
Strab. 10.451) between the river Acheloos and the river Euenos, and was mentioned by Homer (
Il. 2.638).
Pleuron, according to Strabo, was founded by the Kouretes; or Thoas, son of Aeneas, guided the Aitolians there (10.461). When Demetrios II of Macedonia destroyed Pleuron the inhabitants founded a new city on the uplands of Arakinthos, which had the protection of Rome before the taking of Corinth. During the Imperial age the uprisings in Aitolia continued. The ruins of the more ancient city are N of the newer one and cosist of a few remnants of Cyclopean walls. Nea Pleuron has been identified on the Arakinthos (Zygos) in the locality of the castle of
Κυρίας Εἰρήνης.
The city wall is a large rectangule with seven gates and 31 towers served by stairways. The masonry is partly trapezoidal and partly peudo-isodomic with squared faces, well preserved almost everywhere, and datable to ca. 230 B.C. The acropolis occupies the upper part of the
site, but little of it remains. A Byzantine chapel was built
on the remains of the Temple of Athena. The actual city
occupies a vast terrace 243 m above sea level, with which
it is linked N-S by a defense wall that also encircles the
port. The civil buildings are to the S. The theater is in
the SW part of the city with the proscenium leaning
against the inside surface of the city wall. The central
part of the building housing the skene is a tower. The
proscenium had six columns, and the parascenia must
have been elevated above it and must have leaned against
the wall. The circle of the orchestra is tangent to the
skene building. The cavea, well preserved at the N, had
five sections and six staircases. The construction of the
theater is contemporary with that of the walls.
Several other areas are recognizable within the city
walls, including the site of the agora, with a stoa oriented N-S and ca. 62 m long, and the plan of the gymnasium. To the SE was a large communal cistern (30 x 20 m) with five rectangular basins. There are also remains of unidentifiable public buildings and rather extensive remnants of houses and cisterns. The necropoleis extend to the S of the terrace occupied by the city.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ArchAnz 31 (1916); E. Fiechter,
Die
Theater von Oiniadai und Neupleuron (1931); P. E.
Arias,
Il teatro greco fuori di Atene (1934); R. L. Scranton,
Greek Walls (1941); R. E. Wycherley,
How the
Greeks Built Cities (1949); W. B. Dinsmoor,
The Architecture of Ancient Greece (1950).
N. BONACASA
