Locrians
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The Locrians or Locri (Greek: Λοκροί) were an ancient greek people in Greece. Locrians spoke the Doric-Northwest dialect and this indicates that they must have been of doric descent. They inhabited the ancient region of Locris in Central Greece while the prehistoric residents of this region were Leleges and the latter were replaced by Locrians. 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.) According to some traditions, 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, called Ozoli, 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.
