The Evrotas (Modern Greek: ) or Eurotas () is the main river of Laconia and one of the major rivers of the Peloponnese, in Greece. The river's springs are located just northwest of the border between Laconia and Arcadia, at Skortsinos. The river is also fed by underwater springs at Pellana and by tributaries coursing down from Mt Taygetos and Mt Parnon, which flank the Evrotas Valley to the west and east respectively. The river is long,Greece in Figures January - March 2018, p. 12 flowing in a north-south direction and emptying into the Laconian Gulf. Its drainage basin is .
Etymology One etymology derives the word Eurōtas from the ancient Greek eurōs (εὐρώς), "mold".. The adjective eurōeis "moldy," is genuinely ancient, used as an epithet of Hades in Homer, but is in the Ionic rather than Doric dialect.
The name of the river has changed more than once. Names attested in early times include the Bomycas and the Himeras, later Evrotas, changing to Iri in the Middle Ages (and back to Evrotas in recent times).
The name Evrotas does not appear in the works of Homer, which purport to recount the stories and geography of Mycenaean Greece. (In that legendary time the Dorians are not known to have been present in the Evrotas Valley.)
Geography
Physical
Sources The source of the Evrotas River is a surface spring called Piges Evrota (Πηγές Ευρώτα, "Eurotas Springs") near the village of Skortsinos, Arcadia, by the side of the road ascending from Kyparissi. The spring is an outlet of an aquifer in the adjacent limestone ridge at a locale called Kephalari. The ridge, a karst, is not part of the Taygetus Massif but, like the other mountains of Arcadia, is a nappe raised by the compressional forces on the Hellenic Plate by the subduction of Africa. The spring is also called Logaras Spring.
Logaras Spring supplies an anciently constructed catchment basin about the size of a pond, sometimes called a lake, which exits both to irrigation channels and to the Alpheios stream (not to be confused with the Alpheios river in the northwestern Peloponnese). The flow is copious except in times of drought. A recent study measured the outflow through the catchment exit every 15 days for 540 days in 2006-2007. It recorded a maximum of 1748 cubic m per hour and a minimum of 310.5 cubic m per hour. From the catchment at an altitude of part of the water flows into the Alpheios stream, which enters the upper Eurotas.
The Laconian Alpheios stream is unconnected with the Alpheios river in Arcadia. The identity of their names comes from an ancient geologic misunderstanding that the Eurotas and the Apheios were connected underground, which deceived even Pausanias, one of the best ancient geographers. He believed they had the same source but that the outflow stream disappeared into a chasm only to emerge at different locations as different streams.Description of Greece, 8.44.3-8. In the most exaggerated form of the myth, the Alpheios continues under the Mediterranean to Sicily or elsewhere.
Main stream Today the river is hydromorphologically far from its natural state. The main problem is anthropogenic abstraction of water, by many methods, from the shallow aquifer through which it flows. The valley contains about 7000 wells. Water is removed direct by irrigation ditches, weirs and pumping stations. Consequently the river is intermittent: large sections are typically dry of surface water even though water still flows in the aquifers. Flash flooding is a problem. Through flood control, the riverbed has been widened in places and straightened, and the vegetation has been removed from its sides.. The lower river runs between dikes in a long, straight course.
Tributaries Most of the numerous tributaries of the Eurotas are right-bank, feeding the shallow aquifer. They are, however, intermittent and ephemeral.. The major ones have cut deep ravines into the Taygetus Massif. The few left-bank tributaries, receiving waters from the deep aquifer, are more substantial, but still intermittent.
The classical Oineus was changed to Kelefina in the Middle Ages and not restored to its ancient name until recent times. The current Magoulitsa was formerly the Trypiotiko.
Delta The rich alluvial soil through which the final 10 km of the Eurotas flows was not there in antiquity. The Eurotas has aggraded the innermost bay of the gulf. The old coastline can be approximated by a line on the periphery of the plain of Elos marking the border within which prehistoric archaeological sites are not found. The line on the west follows the Skala-Gytheion road to Skala, the Skala-Molaoi road to Vlachiotis, southeast along the edge of the rising terrain to Asteri and south from there to the coast. Due to changes in sea level, some land on the flanks of the gulf has been drowned.
The current communities of Elos, Leimonas and Agioi Taxiarches have been constructed on aggraded land. As Pausanias mentions that Elos was a port city, the current Elos cannot be identified with it. Skala, on the other hand, means "place of embarkation." The location of the ancient port, however, is not yet known for certain.
Political
Legendary pre-Hellenic tribe In Greek legend the human ancestor of all the peoples who inhabited the Eurotas Valley was Lelex, eponymous king of the Leleges, one of the peoples of the eastern Aegean whom the classical writers saw as autochthonous; that is, indigenous and pre-Hellenic. His son or grandson was Eurotas, the last of the line. The latter had a daughter, Sparta, but no sons. An outsider married her, Lacedaemon. Although he named the state Sparta after her, his name is now known to have most likely been the name of the Mycenaean state.
Mycenaean, or late Bronze Age Greece is known as Achaean Greek based on the Linear B and Hittite documents. The Dorians who were present were not overtly recorded by the surviving administrative records but by surviving copies of records. Hypothetically, if the Leleges really were in the Eurotas valley, the time of their ascendancy would have been before Mycenaean times.
Until the late 20th century, evidence in the valley of earlier occupation seemed to be lacking. Beginning in 1968 the University of Cambridge began a survey by underwater archaeology of a drowned town between Pounta on the mainland and Elafonisos island on the eastern side of the Laconian Gulf. The town extended over the entire drowned isthmus from 60 rock-cut tombs on the Pounta shore (a beach) to the remains of walls on Pavlopetri island off Elafonisos. A subsequent survey in 2009 discovered even earlier parts of the town and recovered additional pottery. A chronological study was done on "442 ceramic items, an iron nail and an obsidian chip." More research on the site is planned.
The town was apparently continuously occupied from the late Neolithic to Byzantine times when it was drowned, perhaps by an earthquake. Neolithic ceramics were only 3% of the 444 items. The town was mainly Early Bronze Age, which had 40%. The early Helladic pottery is "standard ... some showing close links with the Cyclades, western Crete and the northeastern Aegean." The "15% Middle Bronze Age" is represented by middle Helladic and middle Minoan. This archaeological scenario is not incompatible with the Aegean distribution of the Leleges, although it is not possible to say who the early and middle Bronze Age inhabitants were.
The late Bronze Age had 25% of the items. Classical and Byzantine items were minimal, indicating a probable near abandonment of the city at the end of the late Bronze Age.
Mycenaean Lacedaemon Archaeology has provided a more complete story for the Mycenaean period. On the left bank of the Eurotas, across from Sparta, is a ridge on which sits a temple called the Menelaon. In the 20th century a survey by the British School of Archaeology revealed that the entire ridge, located in the municipal unit of Therapnes, ancient Therapnē, had been covered by a walled Mycenaean town, dated to the late Bronze Age by the late Helladic (LH3) pottery with some middle Helladic (MH) pottery in "pockets in the bedrock." The archaeologists analyzing the site recognized a building Period I, dated between LH2B–LH3A1, the latter being brought to an end about 1425 BCE by a severe earthquake. Remains of a mansion with Minoan pottery date from Period I.
During Period IA the hill settlement was rebuilt. The structures included kilns for smelting bronze. In Period II, dated to LH3A1, a villa-type structure was built on a terrace formed from previous building material further down to the south. It was probably two-storey, megaron-type, with "less substantial walls" but "a massive foundation for what could be a defense tower." It was connected to the top by stairs. Period III, LH3A2–LH3B2, begins with 150 years of apparent abandonment and then a limited reconstruction of a one-storey structure on the terrace. The staircase was blocked. The entire ridge was intensely occupied, leaving a profusion of Mycenaean pottery. The villa was burned at the end of LH3B2, leaving a destruction level. Two persons buried in the associated rubble appear to have died violently. Occupation of the hill went on through the Greek Dark Age, reduced to the Menelaon shrine in the Archaic and Classical Periods. Dedications to Menelaus and Helen are found in its vicinity starting the Archaic period.
The excavators concluded that in the "later 15th century" (BC) the ridge was "the principal settlement site in Laconia." The shrine and its dedications identify it as the site of Homeric Sparta, capital of a ruling couple believed by the population of the Archaic Period to have been Menelaos and Helen.
Classical Sparta
The classical-era city of Sparta was built on the west bank of the Eurotas about halfway down the valley. The Spartans made little use of the left bank of the river: Only one permanent bridge has been found that crossed to it, at Therapne just south of the city. The main traffic was southward to the port of Gytheio, which was the most convenient outlet. All others involved a trek over mountains.
Post-classical Laconia
Modern Laconia is a political subdivision of Greece covering the Evrotas Valley, the massifs on either side, the two headlands, and the enclosed Laconian Gulf with its coastal islands. Its seat is the city of Sparta, as in ancient times, at a site which dominated and still dominates the valley from its central position. However, the rich-soil plain is entirely divided into villages that practice agriculture, viticulture, and arboriculture intensely.
The main roads from Sparta form a branching network leading out radially from the city to connect other cities and towns in the valley. A web of secondary roads fills in the spaces between the main roads.
Climate The Evrotas Valley enjoys a sunny and warm Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa). The interior of the valley records the highest summer mean maximum temperatures in Greece and is comparable to areas of Andalusia in terms of summer average highs. This is due to the interior's geographical location between Taygetus and Parnon mountains, completely cut out from the sea on all directions, some 30 km away from the shores. As the meltemi winds sweep Greece during the summer, both mountains provide a constant hot foehn winds effect which strongly affects the interior of the valley.
During July 2023 the Hydro Meteorological station of the National Observatory of Athens in Evrotas registered a record mean maximum temperature of 42.3°C. On August 3, 2021 the Evrotas station recorded 47.4°C. On average this station records 43 days annually with temperatures over 40.0°C. On July 30, 2021 the Kelefina Hydro Meteorological station of the National Observatory of Athens recorded 47.1°C.
In July 2023 the World Meteorological Organization station in Gytheio registered 46.4°C, the highest temperature ever recorded in the National Observatory of Athens fan-aspirated stations network.
Ecology