HO´MOLE
HO´MOLE or
HOMO´LIUM (
Ὁμόλη,
Strab. ix. p.443;
Ὁμόλιον, Strab. l.c.,
Liv. 42.38;
Plin. Nat. 4.9. s. 16), a town of Thessaly, situated at the foot of Mt. Homole, and near the edge of the vale of Tempe. Mt. Homole was the part of the chain of Ossa lying between Tempe and the modern village of
Karítza. Mt. Homole is sometimes used as synonymous with Ossa.
It was celebrated as a favourite haunt of Pan, and as the abode of the Centaurs and the Lapithae. Pausanias describes it as the most fertile mountain in Thessaly, and well supplied with fountains. (
Paus. 9.8.6; Eurip.
Here. Fur. 371; Theocr.
Idyll. 7.104;
Verg. A. 7.675;
Steph. B. sub voce Ὀμόλη..)
The exact site of the town is uncertain. Both Scylax and Strabo seem to place it on the right bank of the Peneius near the exit of the vale of Tempe, and consequently at some distance from the sea (
Scylax, p. 12;
Strab. ix. p.445); but in Apollonius Rhodius and in the Orphic poems Homole is described as situated near the sea-shore, and in Apollonius even another town, Eurymenae, is placed between Homole and Tempe. (
Apollon. 1.594; Orpheus,
Argon. 460.) Eurymenae, how. ever, stood upon the coast more to the south. [
EURYMENAE] Leake conjectures that the celebrated convent of St. Demetrius, situated upon the lower part of Mt.
Kíssavo, stands on the site of Homolium. (Leake,
Northern Greece, vol. iii. p. 402, vol. iv. p. 415.)
