Post by Alcander on Jan 2, 2008 15:55:31 GMT -5
Larissa (Greek: Λάρισα, Lárisa) is the capital city of the Thessaly periphery of Greece, and capital of the Larissa Prefecture. It is a principal agricultural centre and a national transportation hub, linked by rail with the port of Volos and with Thessaloniki and Athens. The population of the greater area is around 250,000, and takes in the Municipalities of Nikaia, Giannouli and other smaller suburban communities. According to archaeological evidence, the capital of Thessaly, Larissa, lies atop a site that has been inhabited since the tenth millennium before Christ. Traces of Paleolithic human settlement have been recovered from the area, but it was peripheral to areas of advanced culture. The area around Larissa was extremely fruitful - it was agriculturally important and in antiquity was known for its horses. The city finally moved closer to the rest of Greece. When Larissa ceased minting the federal coins it shared with other Thessalian towns and adopted its own coinage in the late fifth century B.C., it chose local types for its coins. The obverse depicted the local fountain nymph Larissa, for whom the town was named, probably inspired by the famous coins of Kimon depicting the Syracusan nymph Arethusa. The reverse depicted a horse in various poses. The horse was an appropriate symbol of Thessaly, a land of plains, which was well-known for its horses. Usually there's a male figure; he should perhaps be seen as the eponymous hero of the Thessalians, Thessalos, who is probably also to be identified on many of the earlier, federal coins of Thessaly.
In the Greek mythology, Mount Olympus is symbolically the home of the Twelve Olympians, the principal gods in the Greek pantheon . The Greeks thought of it as built with crystal mansions wherein the gods, such as Zeus, dwelt. It is also known in Greek mythology that when Gaia gave birth to the Titans they used the mountains in Greece as their thrones since they were so huge, and Cronus sat on Mount Olympus itself.
