A statue of Antinoos in a sanctuary near Lerna

130–199 Probable

After Antinoos, the young favourite of Emperor Hadrian, drowned in the Nile in 130 AD and was declared a god, statues of him were set up across the empire. One of them, slightly larger than life and crowned with ivy like the god Dionysus, stood in a small Roman sanctuary just outside today's Myloi, probably dedicated to Demeter and Dionysus. Archaeologists found it there in 1986; it is now in the Archaeological Museum of Argos.

Note: The statue itself is not precisely dated; 130 AD, the year Antinoos was deified, is the earliest possible date.

Read the full story: Antinoos in Myloi: a marble mystery from the Roman past

Where

Myloi (the village)

Threads

Ancient Lerna

Certainty

Probable likely, but not fully proven

Pictures

• 

  Marble statue of Antinoos found near Myloi, shown from the front and the side. Visit Myloi

Sources

• Visit Myloi, «Antinoos in Myloi: a marble mystery from the Roman past», after the Ephorate of Antiquities of Argolida (excavation of 1986)
• Archaeological Museum of Argos (Ephorate of Antiquities of Argolida)

Also in this period

1. 6000 BC – 3200 BC

   First farmers settle by the springs of Lerna

   In the Neolithic, more than 6,000 years ago, farmers settled on a low rise beside the springs, just south of today's village. Each generation built on the ruins of the last, so the settlement mound of Lerna slowly grew.…

   ProvenAncient LernaWater and mills

2. 2500 BC – 2200 BC

   The House of the Tiles

   At the centre of Early Bronze Age Lerna stood a large two-storey building roofed with baked clay tiles and stone slabs. Rows of seal impressions found inside show that goods were stored and checked here, so it probably…

   ProvenAncient Lerna

3. c. 1250 BC

   Lerna is abandoned

   Lerna stayed inhabited into the Middle Bronze Age. In the Mycenaean period the hill was used mainly as a cemetery and lived on only now and then, and around 1250 BC it was abandoned for good.

   ProvenAncient Lerna

4. c. 700 BC

   Hesiod tells of the Hydra of Lerna

   Around 700 BC the poet Hesiod is the first to write about the Hydra, the many-headed water serpent of the marshes of Lerna, killed by Heracles. In the later version of the story two heads grew back for every one he…

   TraditionAncient LernaWater and mills