Itanus
Ιτανος
Itanus (Ιτανος, Ptol. 3.17.4; Steph. B. sub voce: Eth. Ιτάνιος), a town on the E. coast of Crete, near the promontory which bore the name of Itanum. (Plin. Nat. 4.12.) In Coronelli's map there is a place called Itagnia, with a Paleokastron in the neighbourhood, which is probably the site of Itanus; the position of the headland must be looked for near Xacro flume (Höck, Kreta, vol. i. p. 426), unless it be placed further N. at Capo Salomon, in which case the Grándes islands would correspond with the ONISIA and LFUCGE of Pliny (l.c.; comp. Mus. Class. Antiq. vol. ii. p. 303).
According to Herodotus (4.151), the Theraeans, when founding Cyrene, were indebted for their knowledge of the Libyan coast to Corobius, a seller of purple at Itanus. Some of the coins of this city present the type of a woman terminating in the tail of a fish. (Eckhel, vol. ii. p. 314.) This type, recalling the figure of the Syrian goddess, coupled with the trade in purple, suggests a Phoenician origin.
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.