Note 115 — Chapter XXVIII · PAN-HELLENIC FESTIVALS — OLYMPIC, PYTHIAN, NEMEAN, AND ISTHMIAN.
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There is considerable perplexity respecting Krissa and Kirrha, and it still remains a question among scholars whether the two names denote the same place or different places; the former is the opinion of O. Müller (Orchomenos, p. 495). Strabo distinguishes the two. Pausanias identifies them, conceiving no other town to have ever existed except the seaport (x, 37, 4). Mannert (Geogr. Gr. Röm. viii, p. 148) follows Strabo, and represents them as different.
I consider the latter to be the correct opinion, upon the grounds, and partly, also, on the careful topographical examination of Professor Ulrichs, which affords an excellent account of the whole scenery of Delphi (Reisen und Forschungen in Griechenland, Bremen, 1840, chapters 1, 2, 3). The ruins described by him on the high ground near Kastri, called the Forty Saints, may fairly be considered as the ruins of Krissa; the ruins of Kirrha are on the sea-shore near the mouth of the Pleistus. The plain beneath might without impropriety be called either the Krissæan or the Kirrhæan plain (Herodot. viii, 32; Strabo, ix, p. 419). Though Strabo was right in distinguishing Krissa from Kirrha, and right also in the position of the latter under Kirphis, he conceived incorrectly the situation of Krissa; and his representation that there were two wars,—in the first of which, Kirrha was destroyed by the Krissæans, while in the second, Krissa itself was conquered by the Amphiktyons,—is not confirmed by any other authority.
The mere circumstance that Pindar gives us in three separate passages, Κρίσᾳ, Κρισαῖον, Κρισαίοις (Isth. ii, 26; Pyth. v, 49, vi, 18), and in five other passages, Κίῤῥᾳ, Κίῤῥας, Κίῤῥαθεν (Pyth. iii, 33, vii, 14, viii, 26, x, 24, xi, 20), renders it almost certain that the two names belong to different places, and are not merely two different names for the same place; the poet could not in this case have any metrical reason for varying the denomination, as the metre of the two words is similar.