Vale of Tempe

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vale of Tempe

The Vale of Tempe (modern Greek: Témbi), celebrated by the Greek poets as a favorite haunt of Apollo and the Muses, is the ancient name of a gorge in northern Thessaly, Greece, located between Olympus on the north and Ossa on the south. The valley is 10 kilometers long and as narrow as 25 meters in places, with cliffs nearly 500 meters high, and through it flows the Pineios River on its way to the Aegean Sea.

On the right bank of the Pineios sat a temple to Apollo, near which the laurels used to crown the victorious in the Pythian Games were gathered. The Vale of Tempe also was home for a time to Aristaeus, son of Apollo and Cyrene, and it was here that he chased Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, who, in her flight, was bitten by a serpent and died. In the thirteenth century AD a church dedicated to Aghia (Saint) Paraskevi was erected in the valley.

The Tempe Pass is a strategic pass in Greece since it is the main route from Larisa through the mountains to the coast. Because of this it has been the scene of numerous battles throughout history. However, it can be bypassed from the Sarantoporo Pass with which does take longer. In 480 BC 10,000 Athenians and Spartans tried to stop Xerxes's invasion, but the Persians bypassed the Greek force by marching through Sarantoporo. During the Third Macedonian War in 164 BC the Romans broke through Perseas's defence's and later defeated him in the battle of Pydna. During the revolution of Andriskos in 148 BC the valley was the site of another conflict. There were other battles fought there during the barbarian raids that mark the end of the Roman era in Greece and in Byzantine and Ottoman times. Today to most Greeks Tempe is known for the very bad condition of the road that passes through, and the horrible accidents that it has caused, like the one in 2003 in which an entire 11th grade class from Imathia was killed.

The cities of Tempe, Arizona and Tempe, New South Wales are named for it, as is a farm in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, with nearby farms named Olympus and Ossa.