GORITSA
(“Orminion”) Thessaly, Greece.
An
ancient site on a ridge just SE of modern Volo. The ridge
stretches down from the mass of Pelion to the sea, and
cuts off the plain of Volo from that of (modern) Agria
to the SE; thus the site on it controls the road from
Thessaly along the inner coast of Magnesia. This site and
Demetrias across the way control shipping into the innermost recess of the Gulf of Pagasai, now the harbor of
Volo. The site used to be thought Demetrias but Stählin
suggested that it was Orminion. Strabo (
9.438) says Orminion is 27 stades (ca. S m) distant from Demetrias
by land, and 20 (ca. 4 km) from the site of Iolkos, which
is on the road between the two. This is approximately
correct for equating Orminion with Goritsa. Orminion
was one of the cities incorporated into Demetrias in 293
B.C., but otherwise nothing is known of its history.
A considerable amount of the wall circuit remains on
the hill, in form an oval with pointed ends running
roughly SW-NE, and ca. 2,480 m around. The NW long
wall runs along the irregular spine of the ridge, and the
SE wall along its sloping side, close above the sea. The
old road from Volo to Agria ran through the center of
the walled city, but a new road has been built along the
shore, below the walls. The wall is double faced, with
tie blocks, the interior filled with earth. The faces are
built of large rectangular or trapezoidal blocks laid in
fairly regular courses. Like the fortifications of Demetrias, the wall consisted of a stone socle and upperworks
of earth or mudbrick. The wall was furnished with 26
projecting square towers. The highest point of the ridge,
about in the middle of the long wall, is enclosed to make
a fortified acropolis of very small area; this now contains
a Church of the Panaghia. Here are a cistern and, before
the rebuilding of the church, the foundation of a building
14 x 10 m. In 1931 some tests in the church foundations
revealed ancient blocks (part of this foundation?). The
city wall presently visible is successor to an earlier one
of much the same construction. A stretch of this earlier
wall is visible outside the later one to the S of the
city's W gate, another section at the middle of the
long SE wall where the earlier wall lies along the edge
of a ravine, partly outside and partly inside the later
one. The original wall included a small hill at the NE
end of the city, which the later wall excluded. The
later wall had gates well protected by towers at the SW
end of the circuit, a N gate between the acropolis and
the outlying hill mentioned above, a SE gate at the head
of a ravine just above the W end of the Agria plain
(where there used to be a marshy area, perhaps an ancient boat landing or harbor, but then by the 1930s a
cement factory) and a narrow gate at the head of the
ravine where the earlier wall is visible, in the middle of
the SE wall. At the NE end of the circuit where the later
wall was built considerably inside the line of the earlier
one are the remains of a powerful bastion built to protect this rather accessible section. This bastion was partially excavated in 1931, but only described in 1956. It
consisted of a thick stretch of wall flanked by two projecting rectangular towers with half-round outer faces.
The towers inside had each a rectangular room; the outer
semicircle was solid. There was a door into each tower
from the city, and small entrances into each from the
outside, at the corner between the tower and the wall
between them. The whole bastion is ca. 34 m wide and
14 m deep.
In the center of the city is a square level area 61 x 61
m, probably the ancient agora. A water channel cut in
the rock and covered with slabs can be seen along the
N side, and for a little way down the E side. Near the
NE corner of this area is a small (9 x 6 m) foundation,
probably of a temple. The street pattern of the ancient
town was a grid, oriented NS by EW. Streets and house
remains can be made out in many places.
Outside the walls, above the modern road from Volo
to Agria, on the slope of the hill, a private excavation
in 1931 revealed some ancient tombs—one containing objects of silver, bronze, and alabaster—of the Hellenistic
period, now in the Volo Museum. In 1962 a cist grave of
the same period was excavated here. In the SE end of
the Volo plain under the Goritsa hill, and near the beach
could be seen (1930s) some Roman and/or Byzantine
wall remains.
It has been suggested by Meyer that the fortifications
of the city were constructed at the same time as those of
Demetrias as part of the same scheme. The later wall is
of problematic date, but may, with the bastion, have been
constructed by Antiochus III in 192-191 B.C., in connection with his use of Demetrias as a headquarters in his
war with the Romans.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
B. Dodwell,
A Tour Through Greece
(1819) II 90; W. M. Leake,
Nor. Gr. (1835) IV 363, 375;
R. Kent,
AJA (1905) 166-69
P; C. Fredrich, “Demetrias,”
AM 30 (1905) 221-44 (with notes by A.J.B. Wace)
PI;
A. S. Arvanitopoullos,
Praktika (1907) 171-74; F. Stählin,
Das Hellenische Thessalien (1924) 75-77;
BCH 55
(1931) 489-91
I; E. Meyer in Stählin & Meyer,
Pagasai
und Demetrias (1934) 251-57
MPI; id.,
RE (1939) s.v.
Orminion; id., “Goritza,”
AM 71 (1956) 98-100
PI; A. P.
Wrede,
AA (1932) 151; T. Papazaphiri, “An Hellenistic
Cist Grave from the Neighbourhood of Volo,”
Thessalika
4 (1962) 28-34
PI.
T. S. MACKAY
