Mount Thourion

Mount Thourion or Thurium Mons was the name of a conical hill in Ancient Greece [1]. A temple to the cult of the Muses may have been situated here [1]. The location of the hill was gradually forgotten and was rediscovered in February 1990 by an archaeologist and four graduate students from the University of California, Berkeley [1]. In Plutarch's “Life of Sulla”, the hill is noted as having been the site of a monument to two townsmen of Chaeronea named Homoloichos and Anaxidamos, for their assistance to Sulla during the Battle of Chaeronea [1]. The two showed Sulla's troops a back way up Thourion, enabling them to surprise the invading Pontic soldiers [1]. In gratitude, a monument was erected on the summit with their names carved on it in Greek letters [1]. The rediscovered monument was a marble block, about three feet wide and one foot high, inscribed with three words “HOMOLOICHOS,” “ANAXIDAMOS,” and “aristis” (Greek for heroes) [1]. A site likely to be that of the temple of Apollo Thourios was also found [1].