Gerena (Greece)

Gerena or Gerenia was the name of a city that supposedly existed in Homer's Iliad.

Iliad

In the Iliad, Nestor king of Pylos is give the epithet gerenian, as being from Gerena.

In Homer's Iliad, Nestor sometimes receives the epithet "gerenian", which supposedly refers to the Greek city. The city is believed to have been an ancient city of Messenia, in the Peloponese region of Greece near town of Pylos.[1]

The name is traditionally explained as a local name from a river or town in Elis, bordering Messenia, where Nestor was supposed to have been brought up when expelled for a time from Pylos.[2]

However, Strabo a geographer in the first century, stated that no ‘Gerena’ or ‘Gerenia’ was known to him, and that he regarded the supposed sites as fiction.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Grote, George A History of Greece Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2009) p. 152
  2. ↑ Homer, The Iliad ed. Leaf, Walter (Cambridge, 2010) p.74
  3. ↑ Walter Leaf, Commentary on the Iliad (London, 1900) p. 336
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