Mount Helicon description and photos - Greece: Livadia (Topic)

Mount Helicon description and photos - Greece: Livadia. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The name in English is Mount Helicon.

Photo and description

Helikon is a mountain in the Boeotia region, about 20 km from the administrative center of the region of Livadia and 10 km from the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth. The height of the mountain is 1749 m above sea level.

Mount Helikon has long been known as the abode of the muses, and it was here, as legend says, that there were two sources of poetic inspiration sacred to the muses - Aganippus and Hippocrene (Hippocrene). The latter, according to an old legend, appeared in the place where the mythical winged horse Pegasus, favorite of the muses, struck with his hoof. The sanctuary and grove of muses, decorated with many beautiful statues, a significant part of which were taken by Constantine the Great to Constantinople, were located on the eastern slope of Helikon. It is also believed that it was on Mount Helikon that a source once beat, Looking at the mirror surface of which and unable to break away from his own reflection, Narcissus found his death, whose name later became a household name and symbolizes narcissism.

The famous ancient Greek poet and rhapsodist Hesiod wrote that in his youth, when he was tending sheep on the slopes of Helikon, on the top of the mountain, the muses and Eros danced, after which the Helikon muses appeared to him and not only endowed him with a poetic gift, but also presented him with a rod of magnificent laurel as a sign of the rhapsode's distinction. Probably since the time of Hesiod, Helikon has firmly established itself as a “symbol of poetic inspiration.”

On the western slope of Helikon, not far from the village of Distomo, there is one of the most famous and revered shrines of Greece - the Monastery of Osios Lukas, founded in 10th century by the Rev. Luke Styriot.

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Topic: Mount Helicon description and photos - Greece: Livadia.