a city on a river of the same name on the south coast of Sicily, founded by the Rhodians from Lindus in conjunction with a colony of Cretans, about the year 690 B.C., very near the site of the modern Terranova on the Fiume di Terranova, between Agrigentum and Camarina. Gela soon rose to great wealth and power, and sent out a colony in 582 B.C. to found Agrigentum, which soon rose to greater eminence than the mother city. The most important of its rulers were Cleander, who subverted the oligarchical form of government, and raised himself to despotic power (505–498 B.C.); Hippocrates, his brother, who received the sovereign authority from him, and raised Gela to its highest pitch of eminence (498–491 B.C.); Gelon, who immediately succeeded Hippocrates, and rapidly pursued the same career of aggrandisement, till in 485 B.C. he succeeded in making himself master of Syracuse itself, to which he transferred the seat of government, and thus caused the commencement of the decline of his native Gela; and Hiero, brother of Gelon, whom he succeeded in the sovereignty (478 B.C.). After this time the place gradually fell into decay, and in the time of Augustus was uninhabited.

Gela was the birthplace of Apollodorus, a comic poet of note; and was the place of Æschylus's death, 456 B.C.