HOMOLION
or Homole,, Homolos, Thessaly, Greece.
It was the city of Magnesia (and Hellas) farthest N, at the borders of Macedonia, situated on the
slopes of Ossa where the Peneios emerges from the
Tempe gorge (
Strab. 9.443; Scylax 33; Steph. Byz. s.v.
ὁμόλιον). It lay on a route to Thessaly from Macedonian
Dium (
Livy 42.38) and controlled both the E end of the
Tempe pass and the N end of a more difficult route
which led around the shoulder of Ossa, along the E coast
of Magnesia, and back between Ossa and Pelion into the
interior of Thessaly. It seems to have been one of the
most important Magnesian cities in the 4th c. B.C. With
the rest of Magnesia, it was made subject to Macedonia
from 352 B.C. It lost importance when Demetrias was
founded in 293 B.C., but continued to issue coinage in the
3d c. There are indications it was something of a center
of resistance against the power of Demetrias, but it was
apparently absorbed into that city in 117 B.C.
The scanty, rarely visited or described ruins of ancient
Homolion lie on the slopes of Ossa just above the Peneios
plain, by the modern town of Laspochori, which is just
at the edge of the plain. Some of the city walls remain.
The acropolis, a rocky ridge ca. 220 m above the plain,
is surrounded by a circuit wall of small flat stones laid
in more or less regular courses. From the acropolis the
remains of the city walls run down towards the plain,
just inside and above two parallel ravines.
The N wall of the city lies a little above the plain. The
remains of a cross wall can be seen dividing the lower
city not far below the acropolis. Within the acropolis,
under a chapel of Haghios Elias, the remains of a temple
were excavated in 1911. It had probably been constructed
of mudbrick and wood, and was perhaps elliptical, like
the temple at Gonnos. There were fragments of archaic
terracotta revetment, and some from a later (4th-3d c.
B.C.) rebuilding, and some Hellenistic stamped tiles. The
temple had apparently had two periboloi; SE of the outer
one were the remains of another building. Here was
found the right foot (sole ca. 1 m long) of a colossal
terracotta statue, possibly of Zeus. The objects from the
excavation are in the museum at Volo. By the W wall
of the lower city are visible the cavea of the theater hollowed into the hill, and the remains of some other buildings (described in 1910). In the middle of the lower city
is a cave with carvings by it. Outside the city to the E of
the acropolis are some graves of the Geometric period,
and other graves have been discovered in the area. Some
Protogeometric and Classical graves have been excavated
recently, and a tomb containing some very handsome 4th
c. B.C. jewelry (finds in the Volo Museum).
Outside and to the N of the city walls the modern
road from Laspochori to Tempe comes very close to the
Peneios about one km W of Laspochori. Here (1911)
are the remains of an ancient bridge and above it on a
hill called Kokkinokoma, sherds and some marble slabs.
On a hill called Dapi Rachi part of a wall of large stones,
perhaps of the 4th c. B.C., was discovered in 1961. The
territory of Homolion seems to have adjoined that of
Gonnos to the W (cf. Hiller von Gaertringen) and apparently extended N of the Peneios, since a sales contract (stele, now in Volo) of the 3d-2d c. B.C. found
near modern Pyrgeto (on the lowest slopes of Olympos
just W of the Peneios plain) indicated that the city of
Homolion had purchased land in that area (see Arvanitopoullos in
RevPhil）
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hiller von Gaertringen,
Berl. Philol.
Wochenschr. no. 49 (1910); A. S. Arvanitopoullos,
Praktika (1910) 188-90; (1911) 284-87
P; id.,
RevPhil, NS
35 (1911) 132, no. 36;
AJA 17 (1913) 108; F. Stählin,
RE (1913) s.v.
ὁμόλη 1 and 2; id.,
Das Hellenische Thessalien (1924) 46f; E. D. Van Buren,
Greek Fictile Revetments in the Archaic Period (1926) 41; D. Theocharis,
Deltion 17 (1961-62) chron. 175-79
I; 20 (1965) chron.
319
I; H. Biesantz,
Die Thessalischen Grabreliefs (1965)
130-31.
T. S. MACKAY
