Halieis
HALIEIS (Ἁλιεῖς), the name of a sea-faring people on the coast of Hermionis, who derived their name from their fisheries. (Strab. 8. p. 373.) They gave their name to a town on the coast of Herinionis, where the Tirynthians and Hermionians took refuge when they were expelled from their own cities by the Argives. (Ephor. ap. Byz. s. v. Ἁλιεῖς; Strab. 8. p. 373.) This town was taken about Ol. 80 by Aneristus, the son of Sperthias, and made subject to Sparta (ὃς εἷλε Ἁλιέας [not ἁλιέας] τοὺς ἐκ Τίρυνθος, Helod. 7.137). The district was afterwards ravaged on more than one occasion by the Athenians. (Thuc. 1.105, 2.56, 4.45; Diod. 11.78.) After the Peloponnesian War the Halieis are mentioned by Xenophon as an autonomous people. (Xen. Hell. 4.2. 6, 6.2.3.)
The district is called ἡ Ἁλιάς by Thucydides (Thuc. 2.56, 4.45), who also calls the people or their town Ἁλιεῖς; for, in 1.105, the true reading is ἐς Ἁλιᾶς, i.e. Ἁλιέας. (See Meineke, and Steph. B. s. v. Ἁλιεῖς.) In an inscription we find ἐν Ἁλιεῦσιν. (Böckh, Inscr. no. 165.)
Scylax (p. 20) speaks of HALIA (Ἁλία) as a port at the mouth of the Argolic gulf. Callimachus calls the town ALYCUS (Ἄλυκος, Steph. B. . v.), and by Pausanias it is named HALICE (Ἁλίκη), and its inhabitants Halici. (Paus. 2.36.1.) he town was no longer inhabited in the time of Pausanias, and its position is not fixed by that writer. He only says that, seven stadia from Hermione, the road from Halice separated from that to Mases, and that the former led between the mountains Pron and Coccygius, of which the ancient name was Thornax. In the peninsula of Kranídhi, the French Commission observed the remains of two Hellenic sites, one on the southern shore, about three miles from Hermione and the same distance from C. Musádki, the other on the south-western side, at the head of a deep bay called Kheli or Bizáti: the former they suppose to represent Halice, and the latter Mases, and, accordingly these two places are so placed in Kiepert's map. But Leake, who is followed by Curtius, observes that the ruins which the French Commission have named alice are probably some dependency of Hermione of which the name has not been recorded, since the position is too near to Hermione to have been that of Halice, and the harbour is too inconvenient for a people who were of considerable maritime importance. It is far more likely that such a people possessed the port of Cheli, the situation of which at the mouth of the Argolic gulf agrees exactly with the description of Scylax. Mases probably stood at the head of the bay of Kiládhia. [MASES] (Leake, Morea, vol. 2. p. 462, Peloponnesiaca, p. 286, seq.; Boblaye, Recherches, &c. p. 61; Curtius, Peloponnesos, vol. ii. pp. 461, 579.)
On an excellent harbor near the S tip of the peninsula. Occupied from Protogeometric times, it enters recorded history with Athens unsuccessful attack in 460 B.C. Not long before, refugees from Tiryns in the Argive Plain had settled here, probably without displacing the natives. Sometime before 431 B.C. the town was captured by Sparta but with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War it was subject to further raids by the Athenians to whom the use of acropolis and harbor was granted in 424-423 B.C. by treaty. In the next century Halieis appears as a Spartan ally through 370-369 B.C., after which there is no sure historical reference. Under the name Tirynthioi coinage was issued in the 4th c. as from an independent city-state. The site was abandoned near the end of the century. Scattered remains, including a calidarium built on classical fortifications, testify to some occupation in late Roman times.
The town is located on the slopes and shore below a low hill on the S side of the circular harbor, across from the modern village of Porto Cheli. From at least the 8th c. B.C. mudbrick walls enclosed a small acropolis, the site of the shrine of an unidentified goddess. The military role of the hill is shown by a series of fortifications and associated structures, culminating before the mid 4th c. in an impressive semicircular tower. By the shore a settlement from at least the early 7th c. had a separate wall. In the Classical period a circuit with no less than four gates and a number of rectangular and round towers ran down from the acropolis to, and along, the shore. Private houses and workshops of mudbrick on stone socles have been found over the whole site, affording a rare glimpse at the plan of a provincial town. Changes in sea level have covered up to 50 m of the town along the shore; there appears to have been a small war harbor enclosed within the circuit of the walls.
On the E side of the bay, some 500 m from the city, a Sanctuary of Apollo has been found at a depth of ca. 2 m below sea level. A temple (27 x 4 m) divided into three chambers was probably in existence by ca. 675 B.C.; it has yielded quantities of metal and votive pottery and much of a marble statue of the god. To the S of the temple are the foundations of a long altar and a stadium with two stone starting lines, 167 m apart. The temple appears to have been destroyed near the mid 5th c., perhaps in the Athenian attack, and never rebuilt on that site. Athletic activities occasioned the construction of various other buildings and flourished until close to the end of the city's life. Finds from the city, sanctuary, and necropolis are kept in the Nauplion Museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHYM. H. Jameson, “Excavations at Porto Cheli and Vicinity, Preliminary Report, I: Halieis, 1962-68,” Hesperia 38 (1969) 311-42MPIand reports for subsequent years in Deltion & Chronika.
M. H. JAMESON