Tanagra

Tanagra is a town and a municipality north of Athens in Boeotia, Greece. The seat of the municipality is the town Schimatari. It is not far from Thebes, and it was noted in antiquity for the figurines named after it. The Tanagra figurines were a mass-produced, mold-cast and fired type of Greek terracotta figurine produced from the later fourth century BC, primarily in Tanagra. Government The municipality Tanagra was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 4 former municipalities, that became municipal units: Dervenochoria Oinofyta Schimatari Tanagra History Ancient Anciently, Tanagra, sometimes written Tanagraea, was a town of ancient Boeotia, situated upon the left bank of the Asopus, in a fertile plain, at the distance of 130 stadia from Oropus and 200 from Plataeae. Several ancient writers identified Tanagra with the Homeric Graea; but others supposed them to be distinct places, and Aristotle regarded Oropus as the ancient Graea. Pausanias mentions in Tanagra's location the ancient city of Graea, eponymous of the Graikoi, a Boeotian tribe whose name gave rise to the Latin Graecus "Greek" which later spread throughout the western world as the name of the Greeks and Greece. Homer, while reciting the Boeotian forces in the Iliads Catalogue of Ships, provides the first known reference to the Boeotian city of Graea.