Dorium or Dorion (Ancient Greek: Δώριον) was a town of ancient Messenia, Dorium appears in the Catalogue of Ships in Homer's Iliad, where he mentions it as the place where the bard Thamyris was smitten with blindness, because he boasted that he could surpass the Muses in singing.[1] Strabo says that some persons said Dorium was a mountain, and others a plain; but there was no trace of the place in his time, although some identified it with a place called Oluris (Ὄλουρις) or Olura (Ὄλουρα), in the district of Messenia named Aulon.[2] Pausanias, however, places the ruins of Dorium on the road from Andania to Cyparissia. After leaving Andania, he first came to Polichne; and after crossing the rivers Electra and Coeus, he reached the fountain of Achaia and the ruins of Dorium.[3]
Its site is located near the modern Malthi.[4][5][6]
Homer, Iliad Book 2
Men from Pylos, lovely Arene, Thryum,
by Apheus ford, well-built Aipy, Cyparisseis,
Amphigenea, Pteleum, Helos, Dorium,
where the Muses met the Thracian Thamyris,
and stopped his singing—he was coming back
from Oechalia, from the court of Eurytus the king,
having boasted his singing would surpass the Muses,
daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, should they compete,
so in their anger the Muses mutilated Thamyris,
taking away his godlike power of song,
and making him forget his skill in playing the lyre.
Pausanias
When the Electra is crossed, there is a spring called Achaia, and the ruins of a city Dorium. Homer states that the misfortune of Thamyris took place here in Dorium, because he said that he would overcome the Muses themselves in song. But Prodicus of Phocaea, if the epic called the Minyad is indeed his, says that Thamyris paid the penalty in Hades for his boast against the Muses. My view is that Thamyris lost his eyesight through disease, as happened later to Homer. Homer, however, continued making poetry all his life without giving way to his misfortune, while Thamyris forsook his art through stress of the trouble that
References
Homer. Iliad. 2.599.
Strabo. Geographica. viii. p.350. Page numbers refer to those of Isaac Casaubon's edition.
Pausanias. Description of Greece. 4.33.7.
Richard Talbert, ed. (2000). Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton University Press. p. 58, and directory notes accompanying.
Lund University. Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire.
Reger, G., J. McK. Camp II. "Places: 570202 (Dorion)". Pleiades. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1854–1857). "Dorium". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray.
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