Megara (city)
Megara is an ancient city located on the northern part of the Isthmus of Corinth, nestled in the fertile White Plain of the Megarid district. Historically significant, it boasts a strategic position with ports on both the Saronic Gulf and the Gulf of Corinth. Founded in the Bronze Age, Megara's name translates to "Big Houses," and it is noted for its mythological connections, including ties to the hero Alcathous and the legendary figure Theseus. The city flourished during the eighth and seventh centuries BC, developing a robust woolen industry and participating in trade and colonization, notably founding settlements like Megara Hyblaea and Byzantium.
Megara's fortunes shifted due to competition from Athens and Corinth, leading to political turmoil and territorial losses. The city aligned with Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, eventually suffering from conflict-related setbacks. In the fourth century BC, it experienced a revival and produced notable philosophers and artists while maintaining a degree of autonomy under various regimes. However, it faced multiple destructions, including during the Roman conquest and later invasions. Archaeological explorations have uncovered remnants of its past, including city defenses and residential structures, offering insights into its historical significance and cultural heritage.
Megara (city)
Situated on the northern part of the Isthmus of Corinth between the Peloponnese and the rest of Greece, Megara lay in the narrow but fertile White Plain, the only lowland part of its district (the Megarid)
It possessed a good harbor (Nisaea) to the east, on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea, as well as another (Pegae)—less conveniently accessible—to the west, on the Gulf of Corinth.
The city, which already existed in the Bronze Age, is one of the few in Greece to bear a Greek name (Megara, `Big Houses’). It was believed to have owed its walls to the hero Alcathous—assisted by Apollo—and to have belonged later to Athens; it was at the Scironian Rocks, a pass penetrating Mount Geraneia, that the Athenian hero Theseus was said to have killed a brigand named Sciron. But then came Dorian immigrants (probably from Argos), who brought about the union (synoecism) of a number of villages to form the new city. In the eighth and seventh centuries BC Megara developed an extensive woollen industry, and played a prominent part in trade and colonization, founding Megara Hyblaea in Sicily, Calchedon (Kadıköy) and Byzantium (İstanbul) on the Thracian Bosphorus, and Heraclea Pontica (Ereǧli) on the Euxine (Black) Sea.
But Megarian trade was supplanted by the activity of Athens and Miletus and particularly neighboring and hostile Corinth, and the authority of the local landowning aristocracy gave way to the autocratic government of Theagenes (c 640–620). Racked by internal strife, Megara had had to cede Perachora (its western region) to the Corinthians, and lost the offshore island of Salamis to the Athenians (c 600). The sixth-century elegiac poet Theognis, a nostalgic supporter of the old aristocratic order, was a Megarian; but the theory that comic drama originated among the people of this city (whose gaiety, the megarensis risus, was proverbial) cannot be confirmed. Shortly before 500 Megara joined Sparta's Peloponnesian League, and then fulfilled an active role in the Persian Wars. In 460, threatened by a Corinthian attack, it appealed to the Athenians, who helped its citizens to build Long Walls between their capital and Nisaea. In 446, however, as the ambitions of their allies became more evident, the Megarians massacred the Athenian garrison; and Pericles' retaliatory Megarian Decree (c 432), placing an embargo on the city's Aegean and Pontic trade, was one of the contributory causes of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. In this conflict, Athens occupied Nisaea (424), but Megara played some part in the Peace of Nicias, which briefly suspended the war (421).
Shortly after 400 the Megarian school of philosophy was founded by a certain Eucleides. At a time when the Megarians were banned from Athens, he was said to have attended the Athenian lectures of Socrates disguised as a woman; in consequence, he is portrayed with female veil and earring on later coins of Megara. During the greater part of the fourth century, as Isocrates confirms, the city prospered, avoiding political adventures, attending to commercial business, and producing fine sculptors; its coins show the head of Apollo Agraeus, whose temple, together with that of Artemis Agrotera, was attributed to the mythical Alcathous. But then Megara fell successively under the control of Alexander the Great's successors Cassander, Ptolemy I (308) and Demetrius I Poliorcetes the Besieger (307), and became part of the Macedonian kingdom. From 243 it belonged to the Achaean League (with intervals of Boeotian and, again, Macedonian allegiance), and suffered destruction, first, when the League was defeated by the Romans (146), and then, once more, when the Megarians took the side of Pompey the Great against Julius Caesar (48). During the Principate their city was attached to the Boeotian League, but revived its own local coinage in the second and third centuries AD. In addition to the traditional figures of Apollo and Artemis, these pieces display (under Septimius Severus, 193–211) the eastern motif of a statue of Demeter carried in a processional shrine on a horse-drawn wagon. In the later third century the city was severely damaged by German invaders and suffered final destruction.
Until recently, excavations had yielded little but a large fountain house, but now more than fifty further investigations have taken place. City defences in two areas are ascribed to the fourth century BC, and numerous houses have revealed distinctive basement or semi-basement chambers, apparently reached by movable ladders; these rooms may have been employed for family cult practices. Part of the main road through the city, leading from Athens to Corinth, has also been located.