Ilisos

View of the Ilissus with the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Drawings by Edward Dodwell (1821 )

The Ilisos (Greek Ιλισός, also Ilissus Ιλισσός ) is a small, mostly low-water, the level of Athens by flowing river in Greece. It rises on Hymettosgebirge, flows southwest and empties in Paleo Faliro in the Saronic Gulf. Today, the river is built over several important road axes.

Not far from the course of the Ilisos was found a few years ago the probable remains of Aristotle's school ( Lyceum ). In Greek mythology, the river plays a special role: Plato reported in the Phaedrus that played on the banks Oreithyia, the daughter of the Athenian king Erechtheus, when she was abducted by Boreas. Boreas honor was later built by the Athenians near the river an altar and introduced a festival called Boreasmos, so report it to Pausanias Book I 19.1 and Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, I, 212ff. Furthermore, the river played a role in the Lesser Mysteries of Eleusis, Myesis. As part of the initiation, the priests purified by the sacrifice of a pig in Ilisos.

On Ilisosufer is a sanctuary in which, among other things, the Statue of Aphrodite has been found. It is identified as the sanctuary of Artemis Agrotera. Also on the banks of the Ilisos and in close proximity to the sanctuary lies the ancient Panathenaic Stadium ( Kallimarmaro ), which was built for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 again.