Cape Sideros or Cape Sidero () is a cape at the eastern end of the island of Crete, Greece. Anciently it was known as Samonium or Samonion (), Sammonium or Sammonion (),Strabo x.4.22 "The eastern promontory (of Crete) is Samonium" and "The shores then terminate in a pointed promontory, Samonium" along with a few other similar mentions strongly indicate Samonium is Cape Sidero. There is still a question of how much of the promontory Samonium was considered to be. Salmonium or Salmonion (Σαλμώνιον)Strabo ii.4.3 states briefly "The distance from Rhodes to Cape Salmonium, which forms the eastern extremity of Crete, 1000 (stadia)." The statement leaves little room for doubt about the location of the cape, but one might plausibly question the then meaning of "the eastern extremity of Crete" and whether the one in today's world of GPS is the one matching Strabo's understanding. The difference between Samonium and Salmonium in the same author can be explained by an assimilation Salm>Samm. and Salmone (Σαλμώνη). The cape shares the name Sideros or Sidero with the island-like peninsula of which it is a projection, but which had the name first remains unknown, as does the provenance of either name. Cape Sidero is often not confined to the peninsula Sideros, but might refer to the entire northeast promontory.
Etymology Semantic interpretations The meaning of Sidero seems transparent at first glance, as the modern Greek meaning of sidero with a short e is "ferruginous." The ancient Greek word has a long e, but the shortening of the e is no linguistic obstacle to common descent. There is no evidence of the sense. What about the island or the cape is "iron" remains unknown. Iron is not in its mineral structure. There is a second word sidero, "sidereal," but no evidence exists of a connection to stars, either.
Another seemingly transparent connection is that sidero somehow has the same meaning as Samonium. As the latter word has no Greek translation, it would probably be non-Greek. There was substantial ancient Minoan colonization of the promontory. Its ancient and modern name, Itano or Itanos is the same as the name of the Greek city in the area; however, that name appears in Linear B as the name of a Minoan settlement, Utana, which suggests that Sidero and Samonium may not have been Greek either. Assigning the closest word in one language to a word in another is a common theme in the renaming of places by different cultures.
Forbes and Spratt, 19th century travellers over Ottoman Crete, offer the derivation Eis ten Etera > Sitera > Sidero. The starting point is "next to Etera." The latter city is an MSS or other-author variant of Itanos in the anonymous Stadiasmus Maris Magni, an ancient periplus ("sail around," a list of coastal ports, here on the shores of the mare magnum, the Mediterranean) published by Karl Müller in Geographi Graeci Minores. The other variants are Istros or Istron, Istronas or Istrona, Ittone, called by some Arsinoe. At that early date they could only conclude that an unknown city, Etera, lay above Eremoupolis Beach, where Eremoupolis means "deserted city." It was up to the archaeologists to discover later that the hills around the beach for some distance were the site of the sprawling port of Itanos with two acropoleis and two major churches, and that its name at abandonment had been Itanos and not Etera or Istria. Since the city was at its floruit as a Christian city at the time of the Periplus, and there was no room for any other city, one can only conclude that the author of the Periplus was an armchair geographer, like all the rest, without access to eastern Crete, which any ordinary person today can get via GPS and digital photography.
In another speculation, Sidero comes from Isidore, the name of the saint to whom the nearby church is dedicated. The linguistic gap of that derivation is somewhat harder to bridge. If both the cape and the church are named after the same saint and both are the same property, the development of such a difference in names requires an explanation.
The first use of Sidero for the island or the cape remains unknown. Modern dictionaries reflect a consensual belief that Cape Sidero and Cape Samonium always have been one and the same. Some dictionaries, however, report an original issue whether they were the same. Nothing considered predominantly certain remains yet hypothesized.
Cartographic development In the original disagreement, the alternative point of view that seemed to present itself to cartographers is that Samonium is what is called today Cape Plaka, although no cartographer apparently had any detailed knowledge of that cape when he designed his map. There was no Cape called Sidero. All cartographers worked from other maps, some having little or no independent information about the country they were mapping. The most influential map-maker of the late Roman Empire was Claudius Ptolemy. He had developed his own coordinate system, the first known surviving. The centuries did not preserve early maps, however, perhaps because they were in such demand. All of Ptolemy's maps were lost, but his reputation persisted. His Geography survived as a gazeteer of places with coordinates. It could not be used today, of course, as its distortions are numerous and great.
At the start of the Age of Exploration, the explorers, having not yet explored, and having no comprehensive maps, turned to the maps of their ancestors. The cartographers were happy to oblige with reconstructions. The issue of Cape Sidero comes from alternative reconstructions of Ptolemy. As these became more and more realistic, Ptolemy eventually went by the board.
Ptolemy's 10th map of Europe and gazetteer of east Crete (he says east, as opposed to north and south) lists six named places: 1) Sammonium promontory, 2) Minoa harbor, 3) Camara town, 4) Olus, 5) Chersonesus, and 6) Zephyrium promontory. Being eastern Crete, they should trend N-S, but Ptolemy has them trending E-W, beginning with Sammonium.(Expand the Germanus map below.) The line fits the northeast promontory fairly well except for Minoa harbor, which by the coordinates dives to the south, so to speak. Germanus had Itanos there. Otherwise Sammonium fits Sidero and Zephyrium fits Cape Agiou Nikolaou, with the others between, except for Chersonesus. The latter always means peninsula, but Germanus omits it from the map. Sitia appears as Itea. The Dionysades are missing.
A century later the case of the missing Chersonesus has apparently been solved by a second interpretation, presented by the map of Abraham Ortelius (Expand the map below). Politics had moved on since Germanus. Itanos is gone without a trace. The Venetian Empire, masters of Crete, had engaged in a new struggle with the Ottoman Empire over possession of the Aegean, one which they would lose. Unable to protect Itanos, the Venetians moved its population to Sitia and abandoned it. Sitia became the capital of a new east Crete, Sittiae territorium, the first land basis of the Municipality of Sitia, although somewhat larger. Ortelius shows a wasp-like Crete, with the east-Crete segment thin-waisted west of Sitia, much beyond what it is. This is the new Venetian east Crete.
All of Ptolemy's names have been dispensed with, but a new peninsula has appeared. Salamoni is associated with Cape Plaka. Grandes Island appears as Grades, a peninsula of a peninsula on Plaka. The second peninsula, where Germanus had one, is C. S. Sidero (Capo San Sidero), a Venetian name. At its base is Mauromury. Elasa is there as well as the Dionysades, a much more accurate map, but one in which Sammonium has been robbed of its true location, which now bears a name not previously known, a Venetian name.
In another nearly 100 years the renowned "King's Geographer" of France, Nicolas Sanson, publishes his Ptolemaic map, which keeps all the distortions of the previous, but re-inserts Ptolemaic names in a sort of cartographic fantasy. Sidero is gone now, replaced by Germanicus' pointed Samonium, but the latter name is now associated with Cape PLaka. Instead Sanson calls the promontory Itanum. Itanos the city is back, though it lies nearly invisible under the surface of the hills above Itano Beach. Grades does not yet have island status. Zephyrium Promontory is back, but is nowhere near Sitia, now Cytaeum. Instead Minoa fills the bill. Chersonesus is stuffed next to Zephyrium, but only as an island. Etc., etc.
These Ptolemaic maps are not of much practical use, but are for ornament and show, especially the Germanus maps, with their striking turquoise waters and colored land features with grids of coordinates. The ship captains did not use them, but used instead the Portolan charts.Where a Ptolemaic map was criss-crossed with lines of longitude and latitude, so that the navigator plotted a course from one set of coordinates to another, the portolan was criss-crossed with lines emanating radially from different points, each representing the center of a wind rose. These were rhumb lines. The navigator had to know where the ship was as a starting point. To get to a destination he chose the closest rhumb line passing through it and also near the ship, got on it, and put the ship on the bearing of the rhumb line. Destinations were points on a shore line. Interior detail is not necessary. Candia appears from the middle ages but without detail. The essential information on these charts was distance and bearing from any known point to a charted location. As a vessel never knew exactly where it was for certain, it could not calculate bearing and distance as it went along but had to follow a standard bearing given by the Portolan and hope to arrive at the marked destination. The HMS Bounty mutineers used this method to locate Pitcairn Island. They knew the island's latitude but not the longitude, so they steered along the latitude until they found it.
Rhumb lines went over the vast plains of Asia as well. Not for nothing was the camel called "the ship of the desert."
As the navigator was always looking along rhumb lines, the arrangement of lettering and direction was made conformable. In Ptolemaic maps north is usually on top. In a portolan the landscape and lettering might be presented in any orientation, which makes it hard to read in a book. One might suppose the portolan was pegged to a table around which the navigator could move at will.
Portolans begin in the 14th century, much preceding the Ptolemaics. Typically they were continental in scope to present the full extent of the rhumb lines. Thus there was little room for lettering. Abbreviations were used frequently. Candia (Crete) is always displayed in charts including the Mediterranean. The eastern cape is always shown and is always labeled C. or Cauo Sal., Salmo, Sam. or such, even centuries after the Ptolemaic maps had Sidero. By implication, Sidero was Venetian in origin, which explains why it is so different from Greek Isidore.
The Greeks and Venetian names The Republic of Venice (about 1000 - 1797) involved itself in Cretan affairs when it purchased Crete from Boniface I, Marquis of Montferrat, who had been awarded it as his share of the spoils from the Fourth Crusade, which sacked Constantinople in 1204. The crusaders little suspected the consequences of destroying the power and authority of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. For now it recovered as a rump state with no effective forces.