Taygetus, Mountain range in Laconia prefecture, Greece

Taygetus is a mountain range in southern Peloponnese that stretches about 100 kilometers and rises to 2,405 meters at its highest point. The ridge divides the landscape between different regions and shapes the terrain with steep slopes and varied rock formations along its length.

Taygetus appears in Homer's Odyssey, one of Europe's oldest recorded place names. Pausanias links it to Taygete, one of the Atlantides, who killed herself by leaping from a cliff of the mountain after her union with Zeus. In Byzantine times it was called Pentadaktylos, and under Frankish rule "Zygos of Melingos", after the Slavic Melingoi who settled there.

The name comes from Taygete, one of the Atlantides, who according to Pausanias killed herself by throwing herself into a gorge of the mountain after her union with Zeus. Homer calls the range "perimékeion" for its great length, and Hesychius of Alexandria derived the name from "taýs", meaning great or much. Byzantine writers knew it as Pentadaktylos, after the five peaks of the central group.

The range runs about 100 km from the central Peloponnese to Cape Matapan, crossed by Greek National Road 82 between Kalamata and Sparta, which separates the northern from the central section. The Rindomo Gorge divides the central range from the southern Taygetos. The central part is called "Skoteini Plevra", the dark side, because its villages get little sun in the early morning and late afternoon.

The central section is called Skoteini Plevra, "the dark side", because its villages get little sun in the early morning and late afternoon. The range also appears in the Odyssey, and Hesychius of Alexandria derived its name from the word "tays", meaning great or much.