Meliboea (Magnesia)

Meliboea or Meliboia (Ancient Greek: Μελίβοια) was a town and polis (city-state)[1] of Magnesia in ancient Thessaly, mentioned by Homer, in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad, as one of the places subject to Philoctetes.

[7] Even down to the 19th century, the shellfish from which the purple dye is obtained were found off the coast of Thessaly.

[8] Herodotus mentions it as the place where several Persian ships under command of Xerxes I crashed during a storm, prior to the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE), while other Persian ships crashed adjacent to Sepias and others in front of Casthanaea.

[3] During the Roman-Seleucid War, it was one of the Thessalian cities that in the year 191 BCE, being held by Athamanians, was taken by a joint army of the Roman Marcus Baebius Tamphilus and Philip V of Macedon.

[10] Meliboea is also mentioned by Strabo,[11] Stephanus of Byzantium,[12] Pomponius Mela,[13] and Pliny the Elder.