Demetrias

It was founded in 294 BCE by Demetrius Poliorcetes, who removed thither the inhabitants of Nelia, Pagasae, Ormenium, Rhizus, Sepias, Olizon, Boebe and Iolcos, all of which were afterwards included in the territory of Demetrias.

It was favourably situated for commanding the interior of Thessaly, as well as the neighbouring seas; and such was the importance of its position that it was called by Philip V of Macedon one of the three fetters of Greece, the other two being Chalcis and Corinth.

[6] After the return of Antiochus to Asia in 191 BCE, Demetrias surrendered to Philip, who was allowed by the Romans to retain possession of the place.

[9] According to Procopius (De Aedificiis, 4.3.5), Demetrias was rebuilt by Justinian I (r. 527–565), but other evidence points to the possibility that "ancient urban life may have already come to an end by the beginning of the 6th century" (T.E.

[10] Its territory was settled by the Slavic tribe of the Belegezitai in the 7th/8th centuries, raided and sacked by the Saracens in 901/2, and by rebels during the Uprising of Peter Delyan in 1040.

[11] Following the Fourth Crusade, the town was granted to the exiled Byzantine empress Euphrosyne Doukaina Kamatera, and after her death in 1210 to Margaret of Hungary, the widow of the King of Thessalonica, Boniface of Montferrat.

[12][13] The ancient town was described by William Martin Leake, who visited the site in the early 19th century, as occupying "the southern or maritime face of a height, now called Gorítza, which projects from the coast of Magnesia, between 2 and 3 miles [3 to 5 km] to the southward of the middle of Volo.

About the centre of the town is a hollow, now called the lagúmi or mine, where a long rectangular excavation in the rock, 2 feet wide [0.6 m], 7 deep [2.1 m], and covered with flat stones, shows by marks of the action of water in the interior of the channel that it was part of an aqueduct, probably for the purpose of conducting some source in the height upon which stood the citadel, into the middle of the city.