Chaeronea

Chaeronea (Χαιρώνεια) is a municipality in the Boeotia Prefecture, Greece. Population 2,218 (2001).

First settled in the Prehistoric period at the site now known as Magoula Balomenou, Chaeronea was subject to Orchomenos which was, beginning in 600 BCE, a member of the Boeotian League. When Orchomenos collapsed in the late 5th century BCE, Chaironeia was named one of the 11 Boeotian districts until 338 BCE. In this year Chaeronea was subjugated by the armies of Philip II of Macedon following a battle at the foot of the city's acropolis in which a elite unit of soldiers known as the Sacred Band of Thebes was crushed completely (See Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC)). The site of the Theban defeat was found in 1818 with the discovery of the so-called Lion of Chaeronea, a nearly 20-foot tall funerary monument erected in honor of the Sacred Band. The fragmentary monument was reassembled and installed atop a pedestal at the site of its discovery.

The ancient biographer and essayist Plutarch was born in Chaeronea,and several times refers to these and other facts about his native place in hiswritings.

In 86 BC, Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla won the battle against Mithridates VI of Pontus near Chaeronea. (See Battle of Chaeronea (86 BC).)

The site of the Theban mass grave was excavated in 1879 and the prehistoric site of Magoula Balamenou 23 years later by the archaeologist G. Soteriadis.