GONNOS
or Gonnoi, Gonnoussa, Thessaly, Greece.
An important city of Perrhaibia, located on the
left bank of the Peneois river, at the W entrance to the
Tempe pass. It controlled the pass and the S end of a
route which led from Macedonia to Thessaly over the E
shoulder of Olympos via Lake Askyris. Xerxes came by
here in 480 B.C. (
Hdt. 7.128, 173). The area was settled
in prehistoric times, and the city evidently prospered in
the archaic and Classical periods. Owing to its position,
it was important to Macedon in the Hellenistic period,
and it played a part in wars between Rome and various
Hellenistic kings. Philip V collected stragglers here on
his way back to Macedonia in 197 B.C. after Kynokephalai (
Livy 33.10; Polyb. 18.27.12). It was freed and
important after the Roman liberation of 196 B.C. Antiochus III, advancing N in Thessaly in 191 B.C., was
frightened back to Demetrias by Appius Claudius who
came down from Macedonia to the heights above Gonnos
(via the Askyris route? [
Livy 36.10]); Perseus in 171 B.C.
took the city and strengthened its fortifications with a
triple ditch and rampart, and left a garrison there which
remained until Pydna (
Livy 42.54, 67; 44.6). The city
prospered thereafter, but seems to have dwindled in importance in the Roman provincial period.
The ruins of the site are on the end of a ridge of lower
Olympos which stretches down into the Peneios plain 1
km from the river and ca. 3 km from the W end of the
Tempe pass. The ancient town is almost 2 km SE of
modern Gonnoi (formerly Dereli). The end of the ridge
is broken into three separate hills aligned in a half-moon
shape facing SE. Along the NW side of the ridge is a
deep ravine. In the archaic period the NE hill was circled
by a wall made of small, flat, roughly squared stone
slabs laid in fairly regular courses; part of it is still preserved to 6 m high. In Hellenistic times the city wall was
extended along the ridge to include the other two hills,
and then across the wide, theater-shaped slope between
the SE hill and the acropolis. The line of the wall along
the ridge (ca. one course high) can be traced; the stretch
across the valley has largely disappeared. The wall between the middle hill and the SE one, and around the SE
hill was fortified by some 12 projecting towers. In the
middle of this stretch of wall was a gate flanked by towers. Another gate could be seen in the middle of the
stretch crossing the valley, and outside this gate Arvanitopoullos in 1910 saw a ditch and earth rampart he took
to be the fossa triplex built by Perseus.
The archaic acropolis was inhabited since Neolithic
times. On the summit, excavations in 1910-11 uncovered
the foundations of an elliptical temple of small stones
with an entrance to the SE. It probably had two poros
columns in the door; fragments of an archaic Doric capital were found. The temple seems to have been built with
a stone socle and mudbrick upper parts. Fragments of
archaic painted terracotta antefixes and cornice were
found here. The temple was rebuilt on the same plan in
the 4th-3d c. B.C.: Hellenistic terracottas and roof tiles
were also found. Three half-round terrace walls support
the slope to the S of the temple, which Arvanitopoullos
called the Temple of Athena Polias. Foundations of another building, possibly a temple, were discovered and
excavated at this time just inside the NW gate. Dedications to Artemis were found near it. To the E of the city
walls, in the plain, are the foundations of a temple (partially excavated in 1914) perhaps to Asklepios. South of
this are the foundations of another temple.
Arvanitopoullos supposed the agora of the city to be
on the gentle slope at the 5 foot of the acropolis hill,
where he saw the remains of a large building. Just outside the wall here he saw the remains of a Roman (?)
building. He discovered a water channel just to the N
of the acropolis, which brought water from a spring
called Manna on the peak of Lower Olympos called
Solio, where there was said to be (1910) a cemented reservoir. South of the walled city is a mound in the plain
called Besik Tepe, which was a prehistoric site. Around
the mound are traces of a (period?) wall, and on the
summit remains of buildings of small stones. Ancient
graves have been found at this tepe, outside the N gate
of the city, and outside the S gate. The site of Gonnos
has yielded a rich quantity of inscriptions, some sculpture and other remains.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. M. Leake,
Nor. Gr. (1835) in 388f;
AM 34 (1909) 84; A. S. Arvanitopoullos,
Praktika
(1910) 241-54
MPI; 253-56, 315-20
P, 347; (1914)
208-10; id.,
ArchEph (1911) 123ff; F. Stählin,
Das Hellenische Thessalien (1924) 32-36
PI; E. D. Van Buren,
Greek Fictile Revetments in the Archaic Period (1926)
36f;
AA (1960) 173; W. K. Pritchett, “Xerxes' Route
over Mt. Olympus,”
AJA 65 (1961) 369-75
I; H.
Biesantz,
Die Thessalischen Grabreliefs (1965) 125
I.
T. S. MACKAY