HALIARTOS
Boiotia, Greece.
A city in the
central part of the region, near modern Haliartos, 20
km W of Thebes on the Levadhia road, at the edge of
ancient Lake Kopais.
Founded before the Mycenaean period and contemporary with Orchomenos, the city very soon passed
under the control of Thebes; it was one of the first to
mint silver coins bearing the Boiotian shield, the emblem
of the Confederacy (6th c. B.C.). Spared by the Persians
in 480, it became one of the 11 Boiotian districts, with
Koronea and Lebadeia, from 447 to 387 and then from
371 to 338. At the beginning of the Corinthian War
(395) Lysander and the Spartan army joined battle
with the Boiotians under the walls of Haliartos, and he
was killed there. During the Third Macedonian War
Haliartos joined forces with Perseus against Rome: the
praetor C. Lucretius razed the town, destroyed the garrison, and sold 2,500 citizens as slaves. Its territory was
given to Athens, which administered it through an
epimeletes and sent colonists there. The city was never
rebuilt.
The acropolis is on a low hill to the W of the modern
town between the highway and the railroad; it controlled
traffic between N and S Greece. The Mycenaean acropolis
(ca. 250 x 150 m) is situated at the highest point of the
hill; its rampart is well preserved to the S and W.
On the W side of the hill is a second type of wall
composed of large quadrangular blocks laid in more or
less horizontal courses; it dates from the 7th c. B.C. On
the S slope and at the SE corner are remains of two
towers; the masonry here is polygonal and very workmanlike, the stones being laid on one or two courses
of wide, flat rectangular blocks. It possibly dates from
the end of the 6th or beginning of the 5th c. A fourth
type of wall, of which only the foundations remain,
was made of blocks of crumbly red or yellow limestone (tower near the SW corner). To the W, 100 m
from the NW corner, was a gate 3.50 m wide. Built in
the 4th c., this rampart was razed by the Romans in 171
B.C. On its surface can be seen significant traces of an
Imperial or Byzantine wall made of small rocks bonded
with mortar.
At the very top of the acropolis, excavations have
uncovered (1926-30) a Temple of Athena surrounded
by a peribolos wall, a large building, and the passageway that served both; everything had been razed,
no doubt in 171 B.C. The temple, which was built in the
6th c., was distyle in antis; it was of the archaic elongated shape (7.10 x 18 m) and open to the E. Several
regular courses of limestone have been preserved, on
poros foundations. Fragments of poros columns and
some architectural terracottas were found to the E. Along
the N wall are the foundations of an earlier temple (7th
c.?). The peribolos wall, which is rectilinear to the S
(36 m) and a flat semicircle to the N, is of fine polygonal
masonry laid in horizontal courses. To the S of the
temple is a large building (21 m N-S, 8.90 m E-W)
with polygonal walls of the same type, dressed on both
sides. Two doorways opened in the E wall. Inside the
building four wooden pillars on square stone bases supported the roof. Its purpose is unknown. A large store
of vases, lamps, and terracottas at the W foot of the
peribolos shows that the Temple of Athena was used
from the 6th to the beginning of the 2d c. B.C. A small
necropolis, SE of the acropolis, provides evidence that the
site was occupied in Roman times.
E of Haliartos, on the chain dividing Lake Kopais from
the Teneric Plain, was the very ancient Temple of Poseidon Onchestios; it was the center of the Boiotian
Confederacy from 338 to 146.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. G. Frazer,
Paus. Des. Gr. v (1898)
139-40; R. P. Austin in
BSA 27 (1925-26) 91-99, 268-70; 28 (1926-27), 128-40; 32 (1931-32), 180-212
PI; P.
Roesch,
Thespies et la Confédération b*eacute;otienne (1965);
N. Faraklas in
ArchEph (1967)
Chronika 20-29
PI;
N. Papahadjis,
Pausaniou Hellados Periegesis V (1969)
194-201
MPI; R. Hope Simpson & J. F. Lazenby,
The
Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970), 28-29.
On Onchestos: G. Roux,
REG (1964) 6-22; E. Touloupa,
Chronika in
Deltion 19 (1964) 200-201, pl. 237.
P. ROESCH
