Prosymna ( grc, Πρόσυμνα) was a town in ancient Argolis, in whose territory the celebrated Heraeum, or temple of

Hera In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; grc-gre, Ἥρα, Hḗrā; grc, Ἥρη, Hḗrē, label=none in Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she ...

, stood. Statius gives it the epithet "celsa." Pausanias mentions only a district of this name. According to

Greek mythology A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...

, its name derives from a daughter of Asterion called Prosymna who, together with her sisters Acrea and

Euboea Evia (, ; el, Εύβοια ; grc, Εὔβοια ) or Euboia (, ) is the second-largest Greek island in area and population, after Crete. It is separated from Boeotia in mainland Greece by the narrow Euripus Strait (only at its narrowest poin ...

, were wet-nurses of Hera.

Archaeology

The place was inhabited since the Neolithic period. In 1878, the area of ancient Prosymna,

Panagiotis Stamatakis Panagiotis Stamatakis ( el, Παναγιώτης Σταµατάκης) (c.1840–1885) (sometimes anglicised as Panayotis or Stamatakes) was a Greek archaeologist. He is noted particularly for his role in supervising the excavations of Heinrich S ...

found a

beehive tomb A beehive tomb, also known as a tholos tomb (plural tholoi; from Greek θολωτός τάφος, θολωτοί τάφοι, "domed tombs"), is a burial structure characterized by its false dome created by corbelling, the superposition of suc ...

that was built in the Mycenaean epoch and that was also reused in later periods. Archaeological investigations continued under the auspices of the Swedish Institute at Athens in the 1930s and then during the 1980s and 1990s that found two settlement areas on two different sides of the Mastos hill slope, belonging to the Early and Late Helladic periods, respectively. They have found chamber tombs and large amounts of pottery that testify that the place was an important center of production of this material for many centuries. During the

Hellenistic period In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 3 ...

and the early and late

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

the area also experienced a boom.Berbati en Argolis
on the website of the Swedish Institute of Athens.

References

Populated places in ancient Argolis Former populated places in Greece Ancient Greek archaeological sites in Greece {{AncientArgolis-geo-stub