Ancient Larissa (Λάρισσα).

The name of several Pelasgian places, whence Larissa is called in mythology the daughter of Pelasgus.

(1) An important town of Thessaly in Pelasgiotis, situated on the Peneus, in an extensive plain, and once the capital of the Pelasgi.

(2) Surnamed Cremaste, another important town of Thessaly in Phthiotia, distant twenty stadia from the Maliac Gulf.

Achilles was called Larissaeus by Vergil ( Aen.ii. 197 Aen., xi. 404) s, either with reference to the town of Larissa Cremaste, which lay within his dominions or as equivalent generally to Thessalicus.

(3) An ancient city on the coast of the Troad.

(4) L. Phricōnis, a city on the coast of Mysia, near Cyme, of Pelasgian origin, but colonized by the Aeolians. It was also called the Egyptian Larissa, because Cyrus the Great settled in it a body of his Egyptian mercenary soldiers.

(5) Larissa Ephesia, a city of Lydia, in the plain of the Cayster.

(6) In Assyria, an ancient city on the eastern bank of the Tigris, some distance north of the mouth of the river Zabatus or Lycus. It was deserted when Xenophon saw it. The name Larissa is in this case no doubt a corruption of some Assyrian name (perhaps Al-Assur), which Xenophon naturally confounded with Larissa, through his familiarity with the word as the name of cities in Greece.