CHAERONEIA, an ancient town of Boeotia, about 7m. W. of Orchomenus. It may be the Homeric Arne. The site is partly occupied by the village of Kapraena; the ancient citadel was known as the Petrachus, and there is a theatre cut in the rock. Until the 4th century B.C. it was a dependency of Orcho menus. Its importance lay in its strategic position, the last serious obstacle to an invader of central Greece from the north. Two great battles were fought on this site in antiquity. In 338 B.C. Philip II. of Macedon defeated a confederation of Greek States (see below). In 86 B.C. the Roman general L. Cornelius Sulla defeated the army of Mithridates VI., king of Pontus, near Chae roneia. Numerical superiority was neutralized by judicious choice of ground and the steadiness of the legionaries. Chaeroneia was the birthplace of Plutarch, who returned to his native town in old age, and was long held in honour. Pausanias (ix. 4o) mentions the divine honours accorded at Chaeroneia to the sceptre of Agamemnon. (Iliad, ii. I01.) A colossal seated lion a little to the south-east of the site marks the grave of the Boeotians who fell fighting against Philip. This lion was found broken to pieces; the tradition that it was blown up by Odysseus Androutsos is incor rect (see Murray, Handbook for Greece, ed. 5. 1884, P• 409) . It was re-erected in 1905.
iv. 76 ; Diodorus xvi. 85-86 ; Plutarch, Alexander, ch. 9; Sulfa, chs. 16-19 ; Appian, Mithridatica, chs. 42-45; W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece (London, 1835), ii. 112-117, 192-201 ; B. V. Head, Historia Numorum (Oxford, 1887), p. 292 ; J. Kromayer, Antike Schlachtfelder in Griechenland (Berlin, 1903), pp. 127-195; G. Sotiriades in Athen. Mitteil. 1903, pp. 301 ff.; p. 120 ; 2906, P. 'Ecivµ. 'ApxacX., 2908, p. 65.