The History of Doliche

The history of Doliche begins from the very ancient yeras, when, with Azoros and Pythio, in North Thessalia, west of Olympus, they constituted the Perraeviki Tripolis. (Currency Ancient Perraeviki Tripolis, photograph right).

It was the main and most important strategical place of Perraeviki area.

At this place are the big passages from Macedonia to Thessalia which are:

a) Voloustana or the Narrow passage of Sarantaporos or Kelit Derven.

b) The Narrow passage of Agios Dimitrios

c) The Narrow passage of Petra Olympus and

d) The Narrow passage of Leptokarya -Livithra -Karya

These three cities situated across the passages to Thessalia.

Where the most important guards of the country and we can say the ramparts of Thessalia on which north invaders cane against. When the Romans became the rulers of Thessalia after the battle at Pydna (168 B.C.) they took hostages to Larissa from Dolihi, Pythio and Azoro as a guarantee that they wouldn’t rebel against the Roman sovereignty.

The above cities also participated in the “Community of Perraveia” which consisted of the union and participation of all the Perraeviq cities.

According to the archaeologist Mr Arvanitopoulos it should be considered as the oldest amphictyony in Greece.

Up to 1966 the district of Dolihi was part of the community Pythion when it became and independent community with the same name.

Since 1998 with Livadi the constitute the municipality of Livadi.

Doliche (old name Douhlista).

Dolihinos Zeus: (or Dolichaios). Zeus’ name was given to Dolihi. The inscriptions found show that his worship was spread to the Romans and it flourished especially from 130 B.C. to 256 A.C..

In Doliche was found the rocky hill where the sanctuary of the temple was built as well as a limestone column which shows Dolihinos Zeus on a bull with a thander in his hand.

Many statues of the God were found in different places of the Roman empire, while in Rome there were two temples devoted to Zeus.

He has worshiped as the God of the sky.

Dolichos (=long) was a race of stamina where the athletes had to cover a length of 7 – 24 stadia =1346 – 4615 m. ( 1 stadium=192.27 m.) This sport became part of the programme of the 15th Olympic Games (720 B.C.). Dolichos is believed to have come first in the race of running the distance run by the heralds -the messangers who carried the news and messages through out the country. It was give the name of Doliche because of its long shape.