Living on a rock. The cities of ancient Phocis and the importance of place

Abstract Scholarly approaches to Phocis typically take a regional perspective, highlighting the integration of the Phocians into the imagined community of an ethnos, the role of regional shrines and political institutions in this process, and the strained relations between Phocis and Delphi. This paper examines Phocis from an epichoric perspective. Operating with a conceptually advanced notion of the local, the article does not only collect evidence of local idiosyncrasies, but it demonstrates how the local horizon was a source domain that provided order, meaning, and orientation to the inhabitants of the Phocian cities.

Keywords Pausanias, Panopeus, localism, epichoric history, settlements