River
Flumen Burotas
Evrotas
Listen to the story
A river rising from a mountain in the northern Peloponnese carries the label Flumen Burotas, a copyist's slip for Eurotas, the Greek river whose name means the fair-flowing and which is still called the Evrotas. The name sits halfway along the stream, because there was too little room at its source. Yet the river drawn here is probably the Alpheios, which reaches the sea near Olympia. Both rivers rise close together in Arcadia but run in opposite directions, so the name of the one that flows past Sparta seems to have been transferred to its western twin.