Road station

Dium

Malathria · Dion

Dium, today's Dion near Malathria, grew around the national sanctuary of the Macedonians at the foot of Mount Olympus, where King Archelaus founded games for Olympian Zeus. Here Lysippus cast bronze statues of the twenty-five companions of Alexander who fell at the Granicus in 334 BC; Metellus later carried them off to Rome. The river Baphyras was then navigable, so Dium was also a port. Legend placed the death of Orpheus here. Under Augustus it became a Roman colony, and excavations since 1963 have revealed houses, theatres, an odeion and sanctuaries of Isis and Demeter.

Find Dium on the interactive Roman map →

Auf Deutsch anhören · All place stories · More places in Greece