Amykles or
Amikles (
Greek ?µ???e?, older form, polytonic
?µ???a?, monotonic ?µ???a?; older forms
Amyklai,
Amykle,
Amiklai and
Amikle; Latin
Amyclae) is a village and an archaeological site located southwest of
Sparta. The ancient city was founded by
Amyclas, the son of
Lacedaemon.
Amyclae is in the Eurotas plain, by the Eurotas river; it lies east of the Taygetus mountains, south of Tripoli, southwest of Sparta, north of Gytheio, and east of Kalamata. Much of the area is used for orange groves and other types of farming.
In the second century AD, the traveller Pausanias was informed that the archaic site of Amyklai had its ancient origin as an Achaian stronghold that predated the "Dorian invasion", and modern archaeology has supported that view. The Bronze Age settlement lay on the slopes above the modern village of Amykles. It was conquered by the Spartans as the fifth of the surrounding settlements whose subjection initiated the history of Sparta, in the eighth century BC; the inhabitants of Amykai took their places among the perioikoi, members of autonomous groups of free but non-citizen inhabitants of Sparta.
About the same time, there was erected at Amyklai the Sanctuary of Apollo, enclosing within its temenos the tumulus of Hyakinthos[1], a pre-Hellene divinity whose cult was conflated with that of Apollo, in the annual festival of the Hyakinthia. There have been finds of sub-Mycenaean votive figures and of votive figures from the Geometric period, but with a gap in continuity between them "it is clear that a radical reinterpretation has taken place" Walter Burkert has observed, instancing many examples of this break in cult during the "Greek Dark Ages", including Amyklai (1985, p 49).
