Abia
(Ἀβία), the nurse of Hyllus, a son of Heracles. She built a temple of Heracles at Ira in Messenia, for which the Heraclid Cresphontes afterwards honoured her in various other ways, and also by changing the name of the town of Ira into Abia. (Paus. 4.30.1.) [L.S]
A´BIA (ἡ Ἀβία: nr. Zarnata), a town of Messenia, on the Messenian gulf, and a little above the woody dell, named Choerius, which formed the boundary between Messenia and Laconia in the time of Pausanias. It is said to have been the same town as the Ira of the Iliad (9.292), one of the seven towns which Agamemnon offered to Achilles, and to have derived its later name from Abia, the nurse of Hyllus, the son of Hercules. Subsequently it belonged, with Thuria and Pharae, to the Achaean League. It continued to be a place of some importance down to the reign of Hadrian, as we learn from an extant inscription of that period. (Paus. 4.30; Plb. 25.1; Paciandi, Monumn. Pelopon. ii. pp. 77, 145, cited by Hoffmann, Griechenland, p. 1020; Leake, Morea, vol. 1. p. 325.)
(Ἀβία). (1) A town of Messenia on the Messenian Gulf, and at one time a member of the Achaean League (q.v.).
(2) The nurse of Hyllus, in whose honour Cresphontes changed the name of Iré to Abia.
- Paus. 4.30.1
- Paus. 4.30.1