Aonia

Aonia may have been a district of ancient Boeotia, a region of Greece containing the mountains Helicon and Cithaeron, and thus sacred to the Muses, whom Ovid calls the Aonides. Or Aonia may have been an early name for Boeotia as a whole. Pausanias describes the defeat of the Aones, a Boeotian tribe, by Cadmus. The Greek poet Callimachus may have been the first to call Boeotia "Aonia". In Roman literature and thereafter, "Aonia" was used more or less as a poetic term for it, and especially for Mt. Helicon, home of the Muses and the birthplace of the Greek poet Hesiod. Hence the adjective "Aonian" usually meant "Heliconian" and referred to the Muses. Virgil tells how one of the Muses led a poet up the mountains of Aonia; he also speaks of "Aonian Aganippe", one of the sacred springs on Helicon.