From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ozolian Locris or Western Locris was a district inhabited by the Locri Ozolae (Greek: Ὀζόλαι) a tribe of the Locrians, upon the Corinthian gulf, bounded on the north by Doris and Aetolia, on the east by Phocis, and on the west by Aetolia.

This district is mountainous, and for the most part unproductive. The declivities of Mount Parnassus from Phocis, and of Mount Corax from Aetolia, occupy the greater part of it. The only river, of which the name is mentioned in antiquity, is the Hylaethus (now the Morno), which runs in a southwesterly direction, and falls into the Corinthian gulf near Naupactus. The frontier of the Locri Ozolae on the west was close to the promontory Antirrhium, opposite the promontory Rhium on the coast of Achaea. The eastern frontier of Locris, on the coast, was close to the Phocian town of Crissa; and the Crissaean gulf washed on its western side the Locrian, and on its eastern the Phocian coast. The origin of the name of Ozolae is uncertain. Various etymologies were proposed by the ancients. (Paus. x. 38. § 1, seq.) Some derived it from the verb ὄζειν, to smell, either from the stench arising from a spring at the foot of Mount Taphiassus, beneath which the centaur Nessus is said to have been buried, and which still retains this property (cf. Strabo ix. p. 427), or from the abundance of asphodel which scented the air. (Cf. Archytas, ap. Plut. Quaest. Graec. 15.) Others derived it from the undressed skins which were worn by the ancient inhabitants; and the Locrians themselves from the branches (ὄζοι) of a vine which was produced in their country in a marvellous manner. The Locri Ozolae are said to have been a colony from the Opuntian Locrians. They first appear in history in the time of the Peloponnesian War, when they are mentioned by Thucydides as a semi-barbarous nation, along with the Aetolians and Acarnanians, whom they resembled in their armour and mode of fighting. (Thuc. i. 5, iii. 94.) In 426 BCE, the Locrians promised to assist Demosthenes, the Athenian commander, in his invasion of Aetolia; but, after the defeat of Demosthenes, most of the Locrian tribes submitted without opposition to the Spartan Eurylochus, who marched through their territory from Delphi to Naupactus. (Thuc. iii. 95, seq.) They belonged at a later period to the Aetolian League. (Polyb. xviii. 30.)

The chief towns of the Ozolae were Naupactus and Amphissa, situated on the borders of Phocis. The other towns, in the direction of west to east, were: Molycreia, Naupactus, Oeneon, Anticirrha (Anticyra), Eupalium, Erythrae, Tolophon, Hessus, Oeantheia (Oeanthe), Ipnus, Chalaeum, and more inland, Aegitium, Potidania, Crocyleium, Teichium, Olpae, Messapia, Hyle, Tritaea, Myonia.

• This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography by William Smith (1857).
• On the geography of the Locrian tribes, see Leake, Northern Greece, vol. ii. pp. 66, seq., 170, seq., 587, seq.