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City of southern Sicily (area 1).
Gela was founded around 680 by settlers coming from Rhodes and the neighboring island of Telos, and also from Crete (Thucydides, VI, 4). About a century later, around 580, Gela and Rhodes founded the city of Acragas, about 40 miles west of Gela.
Toward the end of the VIth century, Cleandrus became tyrant of Gela. He was assassinated in 498 and succeeded by his brother Hippocrates. Hippocrates conquered several cities of Sicily, including Naxos, Zancle (the future Messina) and Leontini, but couldn't submit Syracuse, who received help from Corinth, her mother city. When he died in 485, Gelon, the chief of his cavalry, took power and submitted Syracuse, of which he became tyrant, leaving Gela to his brother Hieron (Herodotus, VII, 153-155). At the death of Gelon in 478, Hieron succeeded him in Syracuse.
It is in Gela that a meeting of representative of all Sicilan cities took place in 424 where, according to Thucydides (Histories, IV, 58-65), the Syracusan general Hermocrates (one of the interlocutors of Socrates in the Timæus), convinced all cities to make peace among themselves) .