Locrians
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The Locrians or Locri (Greek: Λοκροί) were an ancient people in Greece, and were said to have been descended from the Leleges. This was the opinion of Aristotle; and other writers supposed the name of the Locrians to be derived from Locrus, an ancient king of the Leleges. (Aristot.; Hes. ap. Strabo vii. p. 322; Scymnus Ch. 590; Dicaearch. 71; Plin. iv. 7. s. 12.) The Locrians, however, must at a very early period have become intermingled with the Hellenes. In the Homeric poems they always appear as Hellenes; and, according to some traditions. even Deucalion, the founder of the Hellenic race, is said to have lived in the Locrian town of Opus or Cynus. (Pind. Ol. ix. 63, seq.; Strab. ix. p. 425.)
In historical times the Locrians were divided into two distinct tribes, differing from one another in customs, habits, and civilization. Of these the eastern Locrians, called the Opuntii and Epicnemidii, dwelt upon the eastern coast of Greece, opposite the island of Euboea; while the western Locrians dwelt upon the Corinthian gulf, and were separated from the former by Mount Parnassus and the whole of Doris and Phocis. (Strab. ix. p. 425.) The eastern Locrians are alone mentioned by Homer; they were the more ancient and the more civilized: the western Locrians, who are said to have been a colony of the former, are not mentioned in history until the time of the Peloponnesian War, and are even then represented as a semi-barbarous people. (Thuc. i. 5.) It is likely that the Locrians at one time extended from sea to sea, and were torn asunder by the immigration of the Phocians and Dorians. (Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient Ethnography, vol. i. p. 123.)
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography by William Smith (1857).
- On the geography of the Locrian tribes, see Leake, Northern Greece, vol. ii. pp. 66, seq., 170, seq., 587, seq.
