MOUNT ATHOS: AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO THE MONASTERIES AND THEIR HISTORY

Περιγραφή

FROM LEGEND TO HISTORY
Athos is the easternmost of the three promontories of Chalkidiki-a Greek peninsula that stretches into the Aegean Sea between the Thermaic and Strimonic gulfs. Some 60 kilometres in length, Athos varies in width from 8-12 kilo- metres covering in all an area of approximately 360 square kilometres. The landward end of the promontory is low and flat, with small plains and hillocks; but as it extends seawards, clusters of peaks swell higher and higher to end finally in the bare slopes of Mount Athos, whose pyramidal summit rises sheer from the sea to more than 2000 metres.
The ancients called the whole peninsula Akte. The name Athos, a prehellenic word, was that of a Thracian giant who, according to one view, hurled that whole stony mass at Poseidon in a clash between gods and giants. In another version of the Gigantomachy, we are told that Poseidon was victorious, burying the rebellious giant Athos under the great rock. According to another leg- end, first recorded by Strabo and repeated by Plutarch, Deinokrates, architect to Alexander the Great, wanted to transform the whole of Mount Athos into an immense figure of the Macedonian king. The sculptured effigy was to hold in one hand a city swarming with people, while from the other a copious stream of water would gush towards the sea as a continuous libation to the gods. Alexander declined the offer and ordered that the mountain should be left as it was, perhaps because he did not wish to appear to his descendants as arrogant as the Persian King Xerxes. In 481 B.C. Xerxes cut a canal through the narrow neck of land at the beginning of the peninsula, between the ferissos and the Singitic gulfs, so that his fleet should avoid the stormy waters round Cape Akrothoos where earlier the ships of the Persian general Mardonius had. sunk. Some historians doubt that the cutting was ever completed, while others. dispute that it was ever undertaken. The latter claim that Xerxes transported his fleet overland on wooden rollers.
During the centuries that follow, little very little, indeed-is known of the history of Athos. Sources refer to several small towns or ‘small settlements’ there, such as Sani, Thissos, Kleonae, Dion, Olophixos, Akrothooi, and Apolionia, whose exact locations have not been determined. But we know for certain that, although they prospered for a while, they must have been already in ruins by the time the first hermits came to the Mountain.