HALIEIS
HALIEIS (
Ἁλιεῖς), 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.
Ἁλιεῖς; Strab. viii. p.373.)
This town was taken about Ol. 80 by Aneristus, the son of Sperthias, and made subject to Sparta (
ὃς εἷλε Ἁλιέας [not
῾αλιέας]
τούς ἐκ Τίρυνθος, Helod. 7.137).
The district was afterwards ravaged on more than one occasion by the Athenians. (
Thuc. 1.105,
2.56,
4.45;
Diod. 11.78.)
After the Peloponnesian War the Halieis are mentioned by Xenophon as an autonomous people. (
Xen. Hell. 4.2. 6,
6.2.3.)
The district is called
ἡ Ἁλιάς by Thucydides (
2.56,
4.45), who also calls the people or their town
Ἁλιεῖς; for, in 1.105, the true reading is
ἐς Ἁλιᾶς, i.e.
Ἁλιέας. (See Meineke, and
Steph. B. sub voce Ἁλιεῖς.) In an inscription we find
ἐν Ἁλιεῦσιν. (Böckh,
Inscr. no. 165.)
Scylax (p. 20) speaks of HALIA (
Ἁλία) as a port at the mouth of the Argolic gulf. Callimachus calls the town ALYCUS (
Ἄλυκος, Steph. B. sub voce . v.), and by Pausanias it is named HALICE (
Ἁλίκη), and its inhabitants Halici. (
Paus. 2.36.1.) he 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
Kranídhi, 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. Musádki, the other on the south-western side, at the head of a deep bay called
Kheli or
Bizáti: 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
Kiládhia. [
MASES] (Leake,
Morea, vol. ii. p. 462,
Peloponnesiaca, p. 286, seq.; Boblaye,
Recherches, &c. p. 61; Curtius,
Peloponnesos, vol. ii. pp. 461, 579.)
