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Libethra (or Leibethra), a place close to Olympus where Orpheus was buried, destroyed by a flood of the river Sys. It was a place where the Libethrian Nymphs were worshipped. Remains of Libethra were found.
Libethra (or Leibethra) τὰ Λείβηθρα or Λίβηθρα).
(1) A city of Macedonia, situated, according to Pausanias (ix. 30), on the declivity of Olympus, and not far from the tomb of Orpheus. An oracle declared that when the sun beheld the bones of the poet the city should be destroyed by a boar (ὑπὸ συός). The inhabitants of Libethra ridiculed the prophecy as a thing impossible; but the column of Orpheus's monument having been accidentally broken, a gap was made by which light broke in upon the tomb, when the same night the torrent named Sus, being prodigiously swollen, rushed down with violence from Mount Olympus upon Libethra, overthrowing the walls and all the public and private edifices, and every living creature in its furious course. Whether Libethra recovered from the devastation occasioned by this inundation is not stated in any writer, but its name occurs in Livy as a town in the vicinity of Dium before the battle of Pydna . It would seem that the name of Libethrius was given to the summit of Olympus, which stood above the town, and probably transferred thence to the Boeotian Mountains, afterwards styled Libethrius Mons (Pausan. ix. 34). Hence the muses were surnamed Libethrides as well as Pierides ( Verg. Ecl.vii. 21).
In Larisa I heard another story, how that on Olympus is a city Libethra, where the mountain faces, Macedonia, not far from which city is the tomb of Orpheus. The Libethrians, it is said, received out of Thrace an oracle from Dionysus, stating that when the sun should see the bones of Orpheus, then the city of Libethra would be destroyed by a boar. The citizens paid little regard to the oracle, thinking that no other beast was big or mighty enough to take their city, while a boar was bold rather than powerful. But when it seemed good to the god the following events befell the citizens. About midday a shepherd was asleep leaning against the grave of Orpheus, and even as he slept he began to sing poetry of Orpheus in a loud and sweet voice. Those who were pasturing or tilling nearest to him left their several tasks and gathered together to hear the shepherd sing in his sleep. And jostling one another and striving who could get nearest the shepherd they overturned the pillar, the urn fell from it and broke, and the sun saw whatever was left of the bones of Orpheus. Immediately when night came the god sent heavy rain, and the river Sys (Boar), one of the torrents about Olympus, on this occasion threw down the walls of Libethra, overturning sanctuaries of gods and houses of men, and drowning the inhabitants and all the animals in the city...Pausanias, Description of Greece, c. 150 AD
CORYDON
"Libethrian Nymphs, who are my heart's delight,
Grant me, as doth my Codrus, so to sing-
Next to Apollo he- or if to this
We may not all attain, my tuneful pipe
Here on this sacred pine shall silent hang."
Vergil's Bucolics
(2) A fountain of Thessaly on Mount Homolé, in the district of Magnesia, at the northern extremity (Mela, ii. 3).
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