Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-dvmhs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-05T15:49:41.828Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Excavations at Halos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2013

A. J. B. Wace  and
M. S. Thompson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Although one of the smaller and less well-known cities in Thessaly Halos in Achaia Phthiotis has played an important part in history. Tradition attributes its origin to Athamas, and its position guarding the coast route between Othrys and the sea into the Spercheios valley, brought it on several critical occasions into prominence. In 480 B.C. together with the rest of Thessaly it submitted to Xerxes without a struggle, but in 346 B.C. it withstood a long siege by Philip and Parmenio. Some mediaeval and Turkish fortifications on the ancient Greek acropolis show that its strategic importance continued down to the last century. The walls which surrounded the city in the plain and the citadel on the hill to the west can still be traced, but of the city itself nothing is now visible. The acropolis is the last peak of the projecting spur of Othrys, which running down towards the bay of Halmyros shuts off the plain of Sourpe from that of Halmyros. This is now a bare limestone hill covered with scrub, and whatever may exist in the plain is hidden beneath the cultivated fields.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 18 , November 1912 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1912

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 1 note 1 See Pauly-Wissowa, s.n.

page 1 note 2 It is not certain if this was also the Homeric Halos, cf. Allen, , Class. Review, 1906, p. 196Google Scholar.

page 1 note 3 Cf. Leake, , Northern Greece, iv, p. 336Google Scholar; his identification based on Strabo's description has since been confirmed by an inscription found at Platanos (I. G. ix, 2, no. 107)Google Scholar, for all the land in the neighbourhood belongs to Platanos. See also Stählin, , Ath. Mitt. 1906, pp. 23Google Scholar ff.

page 2 note 1 Stählin, op. cit. Fig. 6.

pafe 2 note 2 Cf. Mission de Macédoine, p. 412. He is wrong in supposing that all mounds or magoulas are funereal, for the majority are prehistoric settlements (see Wace-Thompson, , Prehistoric Thessaly, pp. 4Google Scholar ff), also most of the small conical tumuli seem to contain built tombs of Hellenistic date (see the references given in Prehistoric Thessaly, p. 55, note 1).

page 2 note 3 Δελτίον τῆς Φιλαρχαίου Ἑταιρείας τῆς Ὄθρυος i, pp. 31 ffGoogle Scholar

page 2 note 4 This report is not altogether trustworthy. A peasant who saw the pile of large, rough slabs covering one of the pyres in the tumulus we excavated (see below, p. 10) described it as domed.

page 4 note 1 Cf. Tiryns, i, p. 157Google Scholar, Fig. 21.

page 7 note 1 Wace-Thompson, , Prehistoric Thessaly, pp. 66, 81, 113 121, 133, 161, 166, 191, as aralic 209Google Scholar.

page 7 note 2 Op. cit., pp. 161, 214, 215.

page 8 note 1 Op. cit., pp. pp. 208 ff. This is the ware classed as Δ Ια, see ibid., p. 20.

page 8 note 2 Wace-Thompson, , Prehistoric Thessaly, pp. 214Google Scholar ff. To the vases there mentioned we may add some from Moustaphakli in Thessaly now in a storeroom in the National Museum at Athens, and two from Pagasai, Π. Χ. Ἀποστολίδης, Παγασαί, Figs. 1, 2. In the list of similar groups found outside Thessaly should be included a new find from Attica, ἘΦ. Ἀρχ. 1911, p. 251Google Scholar, Fig. 20.

page 8 note 3 A minor point as regards the fabric is perhaps worth recording. Though the Halos vases are less well baked than the others, yet the paint is more lustrous than on the Sesklo-Marmariane vases.

page 22 note 1 See Wide, Geometrische Vasen; Poulsen, , Die Dipylongräber; Fouilles de Delphes, vGoogle Scholar; Furtwängler, , Aegina; B.S.A. xiii, pp. 118Google Scholar ff.

page 22 note 2 See B.S.A. vi, pp. 83Google Scholar ff.; ibid. xii, pp. 24 ff; von Gärtringen, Hiller, Thera, iiGoogle Scholar; Tiryns, i.

page 22 note 3 Fouilles de Delphes, v, p. 136Google Scholar, Fig. 511; Furtwängler, Aegina, Pl. 127, no. 15; von Gärtringen, Hiller, Thera, ii, p. 51Google Scholar, Figs. 162–165; Tiryns, i, Pl. XVIII.

page 22 note 4 Cf. e.g. von Gärtringen, Hiller, Thera, ii, p. 150Google Scholar, Figs. 361, 362.

page 22 note 5 This is a very common shape in Dipylon ware, Wide, Geometrische Vasen, pp. 49, 50, Figs. 88–91.

page 23 note 1 E.g. Wide, of. cit. p. 48, Fig. 86; Athens, National Museum, Nos. 132, 811, 14412; Ath. Mitt. 1910, Pl. VI, p. 25Google Scholar.

page 23 note 2 Wace-Thompson, , Prehistoric Thessaly, p. 209Google Scholar, Fig. 145b; p. 210, Fig. 145h, p. 214.

page 23 note 3 Ibid. p. 21, Δ2α.

page 23 note 4 Ibid. p. 216.

page 23 note 5 E.g. Fouilles de Delphes, v, p. 134Google Scholar, Fig. 504; Jahrbuch, 1886, p. 135Google Scholar; Tiryns, i, p. 164, Fig. 23; Athens, National MuseumGoogle Scholar, Nos. 841, 990.

page 24 note 1 Cf. Undset, , Zeit. für Ethnol. 1889, pp. 218, 219Google Scholar, Figs. 27, 29; Montelius, , Die älteren Culturperioden, i, p. 52Google Scholar, Nos. 179, 180.

page 25 note 1 Cf. Wace-Thompson, , Prehistoric Thessaly, p. 212Google Scholar, Fig. 147 a, b, d, g.

page 25 note 2 Cf. an iron knife from the Kynosarges site, B.S A. xii, p. 91Google Scholar, Fig. 12, and another in the British Museum which was found with bronze fibulae with engraved plates and Geometric pottery etc. in tombs near Thebes, Class. Rev. 1887, p. 316Google Scholar, Jahrbuch, 1888, p. 361Google Scholar.

page 28 note 1 Naue, , Vorrömische Schwerter, pp. 12 ff., p. 26Google Scholar; Evans, A. J., Journal of Anthropological Institute, xxx, p. 218Google Scholar; Undset, , Zeit. für. Ethnol., 1890, pp. 10Google Scholar ff.

page 28 note 2 Von Sacken, Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt, Pls. V, VI.

page 28 note 3 An iron sword with a simple button pommel, said to be from Amorgos, is in the National Museum at Athens, Inv. No. 9436.

page 28 note 4 Two similar swords are in the National Museum at Athens, Inv. Nos. 9433 Thebes, 12156, provenance unknown.