Ascra
Place in Greece
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ascra or Askre (Ancient Greek: Ἄσκρη, romanized: Áskrē) was a town in ancient Boeotia which is best known today as the home of the poet Hesiod.[1] It was located upon Mount Helicon, less than seven and a half miles west of Thespiae.[1]
History
In the Works and Days, Hesiod says that his father was driven from Aeolian Cyme to Ascra by poverty, only to find himself situated in a most unpleasant town (lines 639–40):
He settled in a miserable village near Helicon,
Ascra, vile in winter, painful in summer, never good.
The 4th century BCE astronomer and general Eudoxus thought lowly of Ascra's climate.[2] However, other writers speak of Ascra as abounding in corn,[3] Corinthian hunchbacks, and wine.[4]
By the time Eudoxus wrote, the town had been all but destroyed (by Thespiae sometime between 700 and 650 BCE), a loss commemorated by a similarly lost Hellenistic poem, which opened: "Of Ascra there isn't even a trace anymore" (Ἄσκρης μὲν οὐκέτ' ἐστὶν οὐδ' ἴχνος).[5] This apparently was a hyperbole, for in the 2nd century CE, Pausanias could report that a single tower, though not much else, still stood at the site.[6]
