AMPHISSA

Modern Greek mfissa, agricultural centre, chief town of the eparkha (eparchy) of Parnassus (Parnasss), capital of the noms (department) of Foks (Phocis), central Greece, at the northwestern limit of the fertile Crisaean plain between the Gina Mountains and the Parnassus massif. The economy includes trade in wheat, livestock, and particularly olives grown on the Crisaean plain. Bauxite is mined southeast of Amphissa and trucked to an aluminum-reduction plant at neighbouring Antikyra on an inlet of the Gulf of Corinth. During the European Middle Ages, Ita, the ancient Chaleion, supplanted the 6th-century-BC port of Cyrrha (Krra), situated just southeast of Ita. On Amphissa's acropolis sits a ruined Franco-Catalan fortress supported by ancient foundations. The town is the seat of a metropolitan bishop of the Orthodox Church of Greece. Close to Delphi, ancient Amphissa was the capital of Ozolian (western) Locris. The ruined acropolis of the modern tiered town dates apparently from about the 5th century BC, or late Archaic period. The city provoked the Fourth Sacred War when it was denounced (339 BC) for the impiety of cultivating the sacred wooded plain of Crisa, still drained by the stream Pleistus. The following year it was destroyed by Philip II of Macedonia, who undertook the punitive mission on behalf of the Council of the Delphic Amphictyony (a league of Greek states), a task that also gave him an excuse to tighten his control on other Greek cities, leading to their permanent loss of independence after the Battle of Cheronaea (338 BC). The rebuilt city joined the Aetolian League, remaining a member until 167 BC, when it was forced to secede by Roman conquest. The 2nd-century-AD Greek traveler Pausanias reported that Amphissa had a temple to Athena with a very early statue of the goddess. Inscriptions concerning repairs on the city's aqueduct indicate that it remained active through the late Roman period. Destroyed by the Bulgars about the 10th century, Amphissa was rebuilt by the Franks and became known as Slona. It was held by the Catalans (131135), passing then to Count Alphonse Frederick of Aragon, whose family held it until its fall to the Turks in 1394. Amphissa became part of Greece when it won its independence from Turkey in 1829. Pop. (1981) 7,233.