city state · Italy

Gela

688 BCE – 282 BCE (approx.) · capital Gela

Rhodian and Cretan colony on Sicily's south coast whose tyrants, Hippocrates and Gelon, built the first great Greek power on the island.

Origins

Colonists from Lindos on Rhodes and from Crete, led by Antiphemus and Entimus, founded Gela around 689 BCE on a long ridge by the Gela river, inland of a sandy coast. The colony pushed into the Sicel interior and in 580 BCE founded Acragas to the west.

Rule and society

Gela reached its peak under the tyrants Cleander and Hippocrates, who around 495 BCE dominated much of eastern Sicily, and under Gelon, who seized Syracuse in 485 BCE and moved half of Gela's people there. Its farmland produced grain and horses, and its terracotta workshops and coins with a man-headed bull were renowned. The playwright Aeschylus died there in 456 BCE.

Decline and legacy

Carthage sacked Gela in 405 BCE. Timoleon resettled it in the 330s BCE, but in 282 BCE Phintias, tyrant of Acragas, destroyed it and moved its people to his new city at Licata. The site was refounded by Frederick II in 1233 as Terranova, renamed Gela in 1927.

Lineage

GelaSyracuse 734 BCE – 212 BCE

Connections (2)

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Cite this page
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Gela. In The Epoch Institute States Register. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/gela
MLA
“Gela.” The Epoch Institute States Register, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/gela. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Gela.” The Epoch Institute States Register. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/gela.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Gela’, The Epoch Institute States Register. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/gela (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random state ↻