Gefyra

(γέφυρα). A bridge. The earliest bridge mentioned in history is one built at Babylon across the Euphrates. It was of wood, and was constructed in the reign of Queen Nitocris, about 606 BC ( Herod.i. 178-186).

In Greece Mycenaean stone bridges were build c. 1300/1200 BC such as the Arkadiko Bridges.

Bridges were constructed resting on floats like a pontoon, with cables of flax and papyrus tightly strained by windlasses to support the planking. These bridges were called σχεδίαι, and were for military purposes only. Such was the high bridge thrown across the Thracian Bosporus by a Samian Greek named Mandrocles at the order of the Persian king Darius ( Herod.iv. 83Herod., 85Herod., 87Herod., 88), and such also, though more carefully built, was that over the Hellespont connecting Sestos and Abydos, built for Xerxes when he invaded Greece in B.C. 480 ( Herod.vii. 36). Roman engineers erected massive structures of stone of remarkable size, as that over the Acheron which was a thousand feet in length (Pliny , Pliny H. N.iv. 1), and that which united the island of Euboea to the mainland.

Bridges in modern Greece