Alfeios

The Alpheios, sometimes spelled Alfeiós, is the main stream of the Alpheios Valley drainage system, a dendritic type, originating on the north slopes of Mount Taygetus, located in the center of the Peloponnesus of Greece, and flowing to the northwest to the vicinity of Olympia, where it turns to the west and, after being impounded by the Flokas Dam, a hydroelectric facility, empties into the Gulf of Kyparissia of the Ionian Sea south of Pyrgos. The entrance into the gulf through agricultural land and across an unpopulated, sandy beach partially blocked by a spit is hydrologically unspectacular, with the water too shallow to be navigable by any but the smallest craft. The concept of a single source has little meaning for most of the rivers of Greece, which begin as a confluence of multiple springs in the mountain valleys. There is almost never just one, although most may be unreported or neglected. Thus it is appropriate to speak "a source" or "the sources" but never "the source."

Nevertheless, competing villages sometimes claim to own "the source." Moreover, the sources are not geologically stable, but change frequently in history. In karst terrain, such as the Peloponnesus, the population is acutely aware that rivers may run underground for some distance. Thus the "source" of the Alpheios has always been a subject of debate and literary fantasies, some wild by modern geologic