Aegea

Aegea is a back-formation from "Aegean", the sea that was named for an eponymous Aegeus in early levels of Greek mythology. The "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (1911) mentioned an Aegea, queen of the Amazons, as an alternative eponym of the Aegean Sea, and Aegea was the name of the wife of the Roman proconsul of Achaia whom the apostle Andrew converted and baptised, according to Jacob de Voragine's "Golden Legend", "De Sancto Andrea Apostolo." "Aegea" is found in modern baby-name books and carried by some contemporary women.

Modern Italian has the adjective "Egea" ("Aegean"), but Classical Latin had none. Modern botanical Latin sometimes uses the specific epithet "aegea" to mean "of the Aegean".

Modern usages include "Aegea" as a Turkish socio-geographic term for the Aegean basin and the nations around it, as in "İzmir, pearl of Aegea." Geologists also use "Aegea" to describe the fragmentary rotating crustal block that supports mainland Greece and the Aegean basin, as a parallel to "Anatolia." This block is rotating counter-clockwise and is being strongly subducted into a line of trenches south of Crete.

Near another city of Aegea, in Euboea, Poseidon had his watery palace.

Aegea or Aiyai is the ancient name for modern Ayas, Turkey.

External links

* [http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Feasts-and-Saints/May/May-20.html#thalaleas The Martyrs Thallelaios, Alexander and Asterios]
* [http://www.gmu.edu/departments/fld/CLASSICS/vorag.andrea.html "Legenda Aurea":] excerpt (in Latin)
* [http://www.snible.org/coins/hn/cilicia.html Ancient Coinage of Cilicia]