Prasiae or Prasiai (Ancient Greek: Πρασιαί),[1][2][3] or Prasia (Πρασία),[4][5] also known as Brasiae or Brasiai (Βρασιαί),[6] was a town on the eastern coast of ancient Laconia, described by Pausanias as the farthest of the Eleuthero-Laconian places on this part of the coast, and as distant 200 stadia by sea from Cyphanta.
Pausanias relates a story, found nowhere else in Greece, that Semele, after giving birth to her son by Zeus, was discovered by Cadmus and put with Dionysus into a chest, which was washed up by the waves at Prasiae.
Semele, who was no longer alive when found, received a splendid funeral, but the Prasiaeans brought up Dionysus and changed the name of their town from Oreiatae or Oreiatai (Ὀρειάταί) to Brasiae.
[10] In the Macedonian period Prasiae, with other Laconian towns on this coast, passed into the hands of the Argives;[11] whence Strabo calls it one of the Argive towns,[2] though in another passage he says that it belonged at an earlier period to the Lacedaemonians.
[13] Among the curiosities of Prasiae Pausanias mentions a cave where Ino nursed Dionysus; a temple of Asclepius and another of Achilles, and a small promontory upon which stood four brazen figures not more than a foot in height.