Rhytium or Rhytion, also called Rhytiassus or Rhytiassos, was a town of ancient Crete which Homer couples with Phaistos in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad as "well-peopled cities." The city belonged to the Gortynians. Earlier it was thought that the reading Rhythimne (Ῥυθίμνη) in the entry of Stephanus of Byzantium on Stelae should be emended into Rhytium (Ῥύτιον), but today it seems that Rhithymna or Rhittenia was meant.