Qualla: Las (Greece) https://qualla.com/las-greece en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:07 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/0/las-greece-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Las (Greece) https://qualla.com/las-greece Las (Greece): Introduction https://qualla.com/las-greece/ Photo credit Vincenzo Coronelli, Public domain. Homer wrote the name down, and it has not been forgotten since. Las — also called Laas, also called La — appears in the Catalogue of Ships in the *Iliad*, a brief listing that confirms the town existed in the Bronze Age imagination if not necessarily as described. By the time the geographer Pseudo-Scylax compiled his coastal survey around 330 BC, Las was real enough to be the only town he named between Cape Matapan, the southernmost tip of the Mani Peninsula, and Gytheio to the north. That stretch of Laconian coastline is dramatic and remote even today. Las occupied a place within it that mattered enough to fight over across more than two thousand years.

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Image: Vincenzo Coronelli | Public domain

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/0/las-greece-wp/sw80-las-greece-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Las (Greece): Between Three Mountains https://qualla.com/las-greece/ Photo credit Vincenzo Coronelli, Public domain. When the traveler Pausanias visited in the 2nd century CE, Las was already fading. He described a town lying in a hollow between three mountains named Asia, Ilium, and Cnacadium — the old town itself stood on the summit of Mt. Asia, and the name 'Las' originally signified a rock ...

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Image: Vincenzo Coronelli | Public domain

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/0/las-greece-wp/sw80-las-greece-between-three-mountains.mp3 0:06 2 full Las (Greece): Between Sparta and Freedom https://qualla.com/las-greece/ Photo credit Vincenzo Coronelli, Public domain. The political history of Las is a sequence of allegiances switched by force. In ancient times it was a Spartan possession. In 195 BC it broke from Sparta and joined the Union of Free Laconians — a coalition of Laconian towns that sought independence from Spartan dominance under R...

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Image: Vincenzo Coronelli | Public domain

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/0/las-greece-wp/sw80-las-greece-between-sparta-and-freedom.mp3 0:06 3 full Las (Greece): The Castle They Called Passavant https://qualla.com/las-greece/ Photo credit Vincenzo Coronelli, Public domain. After Roman times, Las disappears from the record until the medieval period. The Frankish conquest of the Peloponnese in the early 13th century brought new lords to Laconia. Mani, as part of the Principality of Achaea, was granted to the French nobleman John of Nully. Sometime af...

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Image: Vincenzo Coronelli | Public domain

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/0/las-greece-wp/sw80-las-greece-the-castle-they-called-passavant.mp3 0:06 4 full Las (Greece): What Leake Found https://qualla.com/las-greece/ Photo credit Vincenzo Coronelli, Public domain. The British antiquarian William Martin Leake visited Passavas in the 19th century and found, at the southern end of the eastern wall, a section of ancient Greek masonry — about 50 paces long, two-thirds the height of the medieval wall, formed of polygonal blocks, some four feet l...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/0/las-greece-wp/sw80-las-greece-what-leake-found.mp3 0:06 5 full