The Euripe or Strait of Euripe (in Greek: Εύριπος) is an arm of the Aegean Sea which separates the Eubée (island of Eubée) from the Béotie and the Attique, in Greece.

A strange physical phenomenon

On the level of the town of Chalcis, the strait narrows at the point not to form but one more narrow Chenal crossed by a opening bridge modest length (approximately 40 meters).

To this place, Euripe offers a singular physical characteristic, about which wonder today still erudite and marine: the current, very extremely on the level of the narrowest passage, is reversed seven times per day, with short periods of respite where navigation can take place without danger.

Strabon, the Geography I, 3,12: “the question of the flow and the backward flow of the Ocean was treated all with length by Posidonius and Athénodore. As regards the alternative courses of the straits, another question which requires to be treated more scientifically than we cannot do it in this work, it will be enough for us to say that there is nothing uniform in the way in which these currents behave within the various straits, to judge some at least by appearance: otherwise, how to explain why, in the one day space, the current of the strait of Sicily, as marks it Ératosthène, twice changes direction and that of the euripe of Chalcis seven times, while the current of the strait of Byzance and invariably continues its walk of the sea of Bridge towards Propontide, except time with other some interruptions, during which, to saying of Hipparque, it does not change any at all would remain completely stationary? ”

Aristote, already, wondered about this curious physical phenomenon, which does not seem in relation - at least, direct - with the common mechanism of the Marée S. a tough legend wants that the philosopher, of despair not to find any explanation to the phenomenon, threw himself in tumultuous water of Euripe!

A precise and imperative indication provides to the level of Chalcis the necessary informations to navigation: direction of the current and permission of passage.

Historical references

• At the time of the Bataille of Thermopyles (480 av. J. - C.), 53 Trière S Athenian block the strait of Euripe. See (external): The Battle of Thermopyles

• During the Peloponnesian War. See: List of the battles of Antiquity: Battle with broad of Chalcis, summer or autumn -429: naval victory of Athens over Corinth.

Literary references

• Plato ( Phédon, 90c): Socrate compares the inconstancy of the thought of certain philosophers with the reversals of Euripe.

• Euripe is probably at the origin of the name of Euripide.

• the poets of the Rebirth take Euripe for symbol of inconstant passion:

“If acollant me me disoit: dear Amie,

Contentons one the other, asseurant

That ja tempeste, Euripe, Not running

will not be able us desjoindre in our life…”

Louise Labé, Sonnet XIII (1555).

• Euripus is the title of a scientific treaty on the tides of Marco Antonio de Dominis, erudite Croatian of the XVIIe century.

• In the Legend of the Centuries, Victor Hugo thus evokes the fight of the Greeks against Xerxès:

“It made night; the sinister sky was sublime;

the ground offered its fog and the sea its abyss.

Here the question which arose in front of

men shaken by the wave and the wind:

is it Necessary to flee the strait of Euripe? Is it necessary for it to make

a terrible face with those which the destiny prefers,

And which is the dreadful conquerors without pity?

They have a half, want other half,

And will only stop having all the ground.

To remain, or leave? Serious choice. Austere anguish.

the chiefs deliberated on a large black vessel…”

Victor Hugo, the Legend of the Centuries, new series (1862).

• Guillaume Apollinaire exclaims at the beginning and the end of the poem the traveller :

“Open to me this door where I strike by crying

the life is variable as well as Euripe”

Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcohols (1913).

Notes, references

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