Euripus Strait - History

History

The first bridge across Euripus is often said to have been built in 411 BC, i.e., during the Peloponnesian War. In fact, there is no trace of this, neither in Thucydides nor in Xenophon both of whom give an account of the history of that conflict (in History of the Peloponnesian War and in Hellenica respectively). Probably that date has been proposed because such a bridge had barred the Athenian fleet from retaining control of the strait, which had been theirs until their defeat off Eretria (a few kilometres South of Chalkis) in 411.

What is sure is that :

• there was no bridge in 480 (Second Persian War), because many ships passed there at the time of the Artemisio battle (see Herodotus, e.a. VII.173 and VIII.66);
• there was a bridge before 334 BC because, as per Strabo, on the one side Ephorus wrote that the strait is so narrow that it was spanned by a bridge only two plethra long (IX.2.2), and on the other side the people of Chalkis built towers, doors and high walls at the bridgehead the year Alexander the Great passed over to Asia (X.1.8).

The bridge was apparently rebuilt by the Emperor Justinian I in 540 AD. Another bridge was built by the Venetians in the late Middle Ages; it was called the "Black Bridge" (Italian: Negroponte) and it temporarily gave its name to the town and island.

In his Phaedo, Plato has Socrates use the Euripus tide as a simile for things that "go up and down" in describing the thinking of those who hold that nothing is sound or stable (Phaedo, 90c).

Aulis, the strait's port on the mainland, mentioned by Homer as the launching point of the combined Greek fleets in the Trojan War, is now a major cement shipping terminal.