Teuthrone
TEUTHRO´NE (Τευθρώνη), a town of Laconia, situated upon the western side of the Laconian gulf, 150 stadia from Cape Taenarum. It was said to have been founded by the Athenian Teuthras. The chief deity worshipped here was Artemis Issoria. It had a fountain called Naia. Its ruins exist at the village of Kotrónes, and its citadel occupied a small peninsula, called Skopos, Skopia or Skopópolis. The distance assigned by Pausanias of 150 stadia from Teuthrone to Cape Taenarum is, according cording to the French Commission, only from 8 to 10 stadia ill excess. Augustus made Teuthrone one of the Eleuthero-Laconian towns. (Paus. 3.21.7, 3.25.4; Ptol. 3.16.9; Boblaye, Recherches, &c. p. 89; Curtius, Peloponnsesos, vol. 2. p. 276.)
Town and port at the back of the Bay of Kolokythia in the Gulf of Lakonia, close to the modern village of Kotronas. The oldest settlement is on Cape Skopa, a former islet now attached to the coast. The site was occupied from the end of the Neolithic to the Middle Helladic period. No Mycenaean or Geometric remains have been found, but given the lack of any systematic excavation, no conclusions can be drawn from this. The agglomeration then spread onto the mainland. There is an archaic remnant, a baetyl decorated with a ram's head and dating probably from the end of the 7th c., but the majority of the chance finds or visible remains date from the Hellenistic-Roman period. Under the Empire, Teuthrone was one of the cities of the Eleutherolakonian League (Paus. 3.21.7and 25.4). An inscription testifies to the presence of a gymnasium. A paved room near Cape Skopa suggests a bathing establishment. Inscriptions, reliefs, architectural fragments, and remains of mosaics have also been found. The houses of Kotronas and of the neighboring village of Phlomochori contain much reused marble from the site.
BIBLIOGRAPHYCyriacus of Ancona (ed. Sabbadini), Miscellanea Ceriani (1910) (= Fontes Ambrosiani II 29); W. M. Leake, Morea (1830) 272, 277, 312; id., Peloponnesiaca (1847) 172; Bory de Saint Vincent, Expédition de Morée: Relation (1829) 443; E. Puillon-Boblaye, Recherches géographiques (1835) 89; R. Weil, AM 1 (1876) 157; A. M. Woodward, BSA 13 (1906-7) 256-57; H. Waterhouse & R. Hope Simpson, BSA 56 (1961) 119I; C. Le Roy, BCH 85 (1961) 215-31I; id., BCH 89 (1965) 358-78I; A. Delivorrias, Deltion 23 (1968) II,153-55.
C. LE ROY- Paus. 3.21.7
- founded by Teuthras: Paus. 3.25.4