Halos (Thessaly)

Halos was an ancient Greek town and polis in the district of Achaea Phthiotis in Thessaly, on the west side of the Pagasetic Gulf about 10 kilometers south of modern Almyros, with two successive urban centers, classical Old Halos at Chorostasi and Hellenistic New Halos at Neos Platanos. The town appears in the Iliad in the Catalogue of Ships, and Xerxes I reportedly stayed there in the summer of 480 BC during his invasion of Greece. Parmenion destroyed the classical city in 346 BC during the Third Sacred War, and Demetrius Poliorcetes refounded it in 302 BC, but the Hellenistic city was abandoned in the mid third century BC, perhaps after an earthquake. Dutch and Greek archaeologists have excavated portions of the Hellenistic settlement, including a Byzantine fort representing the final ancient construction phase at the site.