Sant’Anna (river)

The Sant’Anna, also known as the Drago, and to Polybius^[1] as the Hypsas (Ὕψας), is a small stream in the Province of Agrigento, southern Sicily. It flows through a deep valley until it reaches the ancient Greek city of Acragas (Agrigento), the lower part of which developed on a rocky scarp standing between this river and the San Biagio (then, like the city, called Acragas) to the east. The two rivers merge a little to the south to form the Fiume di Girgenti which enters the sea after a course of about a mile.^[2][3][4]

Notes

1. Polybius is the only author who mentions the Agrigentine Hypsas by name, and he states distinctly that it was the river flowing at the foot of the hill of Agrigentum on the W. and SW. See Polybius, Histories, tr. by W. R. Paton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922–1927), IV : Fragments of Books 9-15 (1925), 9.27.
2. The Cambridge ancient history, 2nd edn. 14 vols (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970-2001), IV: Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean c.525 to 479 B.C., ed. by John Boardman and others (1988), p. 776.
3. Edward Herbert Bunbury, ‘Agrigentum’, in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, ed. by William Smith (London: Walton and Maberly; John Murray, 1854).
4. Edward Herbert Bunbury, ‘Hypsas’, in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, ed. by William Smith (London: Walton and Maberly; John Murray, 1854).