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Region of northern Peloponnese along the southern coast of the gulfs of Corinth and Calydon (area 3).
Achaia (or Achæa) owes its name to the mythological hero Achæus, brother of Ion (the eponym of the Ionians) and son of Xouthus, a son of Hellen and grandson of Deucalion. Achæus' mother was Creüsa, a daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens. "Achæans" was the name given to the offspring of Achæus, one of the hellenic tribes that populated Greece ; it is also one of the names that Homer uses most often to designate the Greeks as a whole.
In his Histories, I, 145-146, Herodotus tells us that the Achæans settled in what later became known as Achaia by driving the Ionians that had settled there earlier out (after they had themselves been expelled from Argolis and Laconia by the Dorians).