Gortyna

of very considerable size, since Strabo reckons its circuit at 50 stadia (about 9 km (6 mi), implying an area of about 6.4 km2 (1,600 acres)); but when he wrote it was very much diminished.

[4] He adds that Ptolemy Philopator had begun to enclose it with fresh walls; but the work was not carried on for more than 8 stadia (about 1.5 km (1 mi)).

[7] Gortyna stood on a plain watered by the river Lethaeus, and at a distance of 90 stadia (about 16 km (10 mi)) from the Libyan Sea, on which were situated its two harbours, Lebena and Metallum,[4] and is mentioned by numerous ancient writers — Pliny the Elder,[8] the author of the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax, Ptolemy,[9] and Hierocles, who commenced his tour of the island with this place.

[10] In the neighbourhood of Gortyna, the fountain of Sauros is said to have been surrounded by poplars which bore fruits;[11] and on the banks of the Lethaeus was another famous spring, which the naturalists said was shaded by a plane-tree, which retained its foliage through the winter, and which the people believed to have covered the marriage-bed of Europa and the metamorphosed Zeus.

These inscriptions are the laws of the city of Gortyn, which are inscribed in the Dorian dialect on large stone slabs and are still plainly visible.

Although portions of the inscriptions have been placed in museums such as the Louvre in Paris, a modern structure at the site of the mostly ruined Odeon now houses many of the stones bearing the famous law code."

A colossal statue of Europa sitting on the back of a bull was discovered at the amphitheatre in Gortyna in the nineteenth century and is now in the collections of the British Museum.

[19] According to Book III of Homer's Odyssey, Menelaus and his fleet of ships, returning home from the Trojan War, were blown off course to the Gortyn coastline.

Homer describes stormy seas that pushed the ships against a sharp reef, ultimately destroying many of the vessels but sparing the crew.