Listed 7 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "ALIIS, ALIA Ancient city KRANIDI".
The city was inhabited by fishermen from Hermione and by inhabitants from Tiryns. It did not exist in the time of Strabo.
On an excellent harbor near the S tip of the peninsula. Occupied from
Protogeometric times, it enters recorded history with Athens unsuccessful attack
in 460 B.C. Not long before, refugees from Tiryns in the Argive Plain had settled
here, probably without displacing the natives. Sometime before 431 B.C. the town
was captured by Sparta but with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War it was subject
to further raids by the Athenians to whom the use of acropolis and harbor was
granted in 424-423 B.C. by treaty. In the next century Halieis appears as a Spartan
ally through 370-369 B.C., after which there is no sure historical reference.
Under the name Tirynthioi coinage was issued in the 4th c. as from an independent
city-state. The site was abandoned near the end of the century. Scattered remains,
including a calidarium built on classical fortifications, testify to some occupation
in late Roman times.
The town is located on the slopes and shore below a low hill on the
S side of the circular harbor, across from the modern village of Porto Cheli.
From at least the 8th c. B.C. mudbrick walls enclosed a small acropolis, the site
of the shrine of an unidentified goddess. The military role of the hill is shown
by a series of fortifications and associated structures, culminating before the
mid 4th c. in an impressive semicircular tower. By the shore a settlement from
at least the early 7th c. had a separate wall. In the Classical period a circuit
with no less than four gates and a number of rectangular and round towers ran
down from the acropolis to, and along, the shore. Private houses and workshops
of mudbrick on stone socles have been found over the whole site, affording a rare
glimpse at the plan of a provincial town. Changes in sea level have covered up
to 50 m of the town along the shore; there appears to have been a small war harbor
enclosed within the circuit of the walls.
On the E side of the bay, some 500 m from the city, a Sanctuary of
Apollo has been found at a depth of ca. 2 m below sea level. A temple (27 x 4
m) divided into three chambers was probably in existence by ca. 675 B.C.; it has
yielded quantities of metal and votive pottery and much of a marble statue of
the god. To the S of the temple are the foundations of a long altar and a stadium
with two stone starting lines, 167 m apart. The temple appears to have been destroyed
near the mid 5th c., perhaps in the Athenian attack, and never rebuilt on that
site. Athletic activities occasioned the construction of various other buildings
and flourished until close to the end of the city's life. Finds from the city,
sanctuary, and necropolis are kept in the Nauplion Museum.
M. H. Jameson, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Oct 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains 11 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Though only a small place(Tiryns) in Classical times, it sent a contingent to fight at Plataia and was a thorn in the side of Argos until the Argives destroyed it, probably in the sixties of the 5th c. B.C. The exiled Tirynthians settled in Halieis in the S Argolid. . . The exile of the Tirynthians at Halieis (Porto Cheli) is confirmed by Tirynthian coins found in excavations there
This extract is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites, Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Oct 2002 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Epidauros and Troizen on the east coast were independent of Argos, as were the three small poleis, Hermione, Halieis, and Mases in southern Argolid. According to tradition, Halieis was settled by Tirynthians after their defeat by the Argives, and none of the cities in the north or south ever lived in anything more than an uneasy truce with one another. . There was no lasting peace after the Peloponnesian War, and as a consequence Halieis and other sites were abandoned early in the Hellenistic period.
A Classical and early Hellenistic polis at the southern tip of the Argolid. The town was laid out in the 5th century B.C. on an orthogonal street plan, perhaps the earliest use of this system in Greece, and was occupied until 300-280 B.C. when the town was abandoned. American archaeologists excavating since 1962 have revealed religious buildings on the acropolis and blocks of houses on the slopes below the acropolis. Early use of underwater excavation techniques were used here to explore an early stone temple of Apollo with a stoa and stadium and nearby house blocks that had been submerged by rising sea level in the last 2000 years. The underwater remains may be viewed from a boat or by snorkeling, and many typical houses are still visible in the trenches on the east side of the Porto Kheli bay.
This extract is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites, Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Oct 2002 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
The name of a sea-faring people on the coast of Hermionis, who derived
their name from their fisheries. (Strab. viii. p. 373.) They gave their name to
a town on the coast of Herinionis, where the Tirynthians and Hermionians took
refuge when they were expelled from their own cities by the Argives. (Ephor. ap.
Byz. s. v. Halieis; Strab. viii. p. 373.) This town was taken about Ol. 80 by
Aneristus, the son of Sperthias, and made subject to Sparta (hos heile Halieas
[not alieas] tous ek Tirunthos, Helod. vii. 137). The district was afterwards
ravaged on more than one occasion by the Athenians. (Thuc. i. 105, ii. 56, iv.
45; Diod. xi. 78.) After the Peloponnesian War the Halieis are mentioned by Xenophon
as an autonomous people. (Xen. Hell. iv. 2. 6, vi. 2, § 3.)
The district is called e Halias by Thucydides (ii. 56, iv. 45), who
also calls the people or their town Halieis; for, in i. 105, the true reading
is es Halias, i.e. Halieas. (See Meineke, and Steph. B. s. v. Halieis.) In an
inscription we find en Halieusin. (Bockh, Inscr. no. 165.)
Scylax speaks of Halia as a port at the mouth of the Argolic gulf.
Callimachus calls the town Alycus (Alukos, Steph. B. s. v.), and by Pausanias
it is named Halice (Halike), and its inhabitants Halici. (Paus. ii. 36. § 1.)
The town was no longer inhabited in the time of Pausanias, and its position is
not fixed by that writer. He only says that, seven stadia from Hermione, the road
from Halice separated from that to Mases, and that the former led between the
mountains Pron and Coccygius, of which the ancient name was Thornax. In the peninsula
of Kranidhi, the French Commission observed the remains of two Hellenic sites,
one on the southern shore, about three miles from Hermione and the same distance
from C. Musadki, the other on the south-western side, at the head of a deep bay
called Kheli or Bizati: the former they suppose to represent Halice, and the latter
Mases, and, accordingly these two places are so placed in Kiepert's map. But Leake,
who is followed by Curtius, observes that the ruins which the French Commission
have named alice are probably some dependency of Hermione of which the name has
not been recorded, since the position is too near to Hermione to have been that
of Halice, and the harbour is too inconvenient for a people who were of considerable
maritime importance. It is far more likely that such a people possessed the port
of Cheli, the situation of which at the mouth of the Argolic gulf agrees exactly
with the description of Scylax. Mases probably stood at the head of the bay of
Kiladhia.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited May 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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