Copae
Κῶπαι
Copae (Κῶπαι: Eth. Κωπαιεύς, Thuc.; Κωπα̈́της, Steph. B. sub voce: Topolia), a town of Boeotia, and a member of the Boeotian confederacy, was situated upon the northern extremity of the lake Copais, which derived its name from this town. It is mentioned by Homer (Hom. Il. 2.502); but it was a small place, and its name rarely occurs in Grecian history. It was still in existence in the time of Pausanias, who mentions here the temples of Demeter, Dionysus and Sarapis. (Thuc. 4.93; Strab. ix. pp. 406, 410; Paus. 9.24.1, seq.; Plin. Nat. 4.7.12.) The modern village of Topólia occupies the site of Copae. It stands upon a promontory in the lake which is connected with the mainland by only a narrow causeway. (Dodwell, Classical Tour, vol. ii. p. 56; Leake, Northern Greece, vol. ii. p. 306; Ulrichs, Reisen in Griechenland, p. 216.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.