Alalkomenes, Boeotia

Alalkomenes (Greek: Αλαλκομενές; before 1928: Μαμούρα Mamoura) is a village and a community in the municipality of Livadeia, Boeotia, central Greece. It is situated in a wide plain, 6 km northeast of Koroneia, 10 km east of Livadeia and 30 km west of Thebes. The community Alalkomenes consists of the villages Alalkomenes and Agios Athanasios. The population of the community was 178 in 2011.

Alalcomenae (Ancient Greek: Ἀλαλκομεναί - Alalkomenai) was an ancient town on the south-west bank of Lake Copais (drained in the 19th century), west of Haliartus. Stephanus of Byzantium refers to the town by the name Alalkomenion.

In antiquity Alalcomenae was famous for a temple to the goddess Athena Alalcomeneis. The epic poet Homer twice refers to her as Alalkomenean Athene (Ἀλαλκομενηῒς Ἀθήνη). The town was by a hill which Strabo calls Mount Tilphossius (named for Telphousa, the spring visited by the god Apollo). Strabo also records that the tomb of the seer Teiresias, and the temple of Tilphossian Apollo, were located just outside Alalcomenae.

Ancient sources preserve three accounts of the origin of the town's name:

In view of the cult of Athena there, presumably local myth in Alalcomenae followed the first of these theories. Pausanias recalls a story that the Roman general Sulla stole the icon of Athena from the temple, and in revenge Athena sent a plague of lice upon him; but afterwards the temple was neglected.

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