A New Bronze Age Site in the Corinthia: The Orneai of Strabo and Homer?

by Jeannette Marchand

Hesperia, Volume 71, Issue 2
Page(s): 119-148
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3182004
Year: 2002
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ABSTRACT:

A newly discovered Bronze Age site is reported at Dorati in the Corinthia, overlooking the Nemea River. Surface material indicates that this was a large Mycenaean settlement, with structures potentially well preserved, and that earlier periods of the Bronze Age are also represented. The location of the site makes it possible to identify it tentatively as the Corinthian Orneai mentioned by Strabo, who implies (contra Pausanias) that this is the site referred to in the Catalogue of Ships. I suggest that Strabo is correct, and that Dorati may in fact be Homer's Orneai. Accepting this identification helps clarify the logic by which sites in Agamemnon's realm are listed in the Catalogue.