Dreros

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Dreros (modern Driros) near Neapolis in the district of Lassithi, Crete, is a post-Minoan archaeological site, 16 km. northwest of Aghios Nikolaos. Known to have evolved in the Archaic Period about the sasme time as Lato and Prinias, the site was initially colonised by mainland Greeks. Reference is later made to Dreros by the ninth-century Byzantine grammarian Theognostus (De orthographia), the early Iron Age site, first excavated in 1917, was most prosperous in the 8^th–6^th centuries BCE; later it became a minor satellite of Knossos and continued to be occupied into the Byzantine period. It comprises two acropoles with an Archaic agora between them. South of the agora is one of the earliest Greek temples; it dates from the Geometric period (ca 750s BCE). The Delphinion, as it is called, was dedicated to Apollo Delphinios. It was excavated in 1935 by Spyridon Marinatos, who published it. Almost the whole of the city and its necropolis have been excavated, confirming that this is a post-Minoan Greek habitation; its inscriptions are in Dorian dialect. Traces of fortifications have been discovered.

There is also a large communal cistern dug between the late 3^rd and early 2^nd century BCE, which contained Archaic inscriptions, one of which, famous as the Dreros inscription, the "sacred law of Dreros" which is the earliest complete record of constitutional law found in Greece.

Three statuettes made of bronze sheets hammered over moulding cores (sphyrelaton) "in the early orientalizing style of the late eighth century" (Boardman) were found in the precincts of the Temple of Apollo Delphinios; they are now at the Archaeological Museum of Herakleion. They probably depict Apollo and Artemis and their mother Leto and together are known as the "Dreros Triad."

In Hellenistic times, Dreros declined in importance to the extent that it was not included among the thirty Cretan cities that signed a pact with the Attalid king of Pergamum, Eumenes II, in 183 BCE.

The site has little to offer to the casual tourist.

[edit] References

• Archaeological Museum of Herakleion
• Perseus site: Dreros
• [http://themodernantiquarian.com/site/10847/lato.html#fieldnotes C.Michael Hogan, Lato Fieldnotes, The Modern Antiquarian, Jan 10, 2008
• "The ancient cities of Crete": Dreros
• John Boardman, 2006. in Greek Sculpture: Function, Materials, and Techniques in the Archaic and Classical Periods, Olga Palagia, editor (Cambridge University Press) (on-line excerpt).