Ioulis or Ioulida locally called Khora like the main towns of most Greek islands and sometimes known by the island name of Kea or Keos (or earlier Zea), is the capital of the island of Kea

Kea (island)

Kea , also known as Gia or Tzia , Zea, and, in Antiquity, Keos , is an island of the Cyclades archipelago, in the Aegean Sea, in Greece. Kea is part of the Kea-Kythnos peripheral unit. Its capital, Ioulis, is inland at a high altitude and is considered quite picturesque...

 in the Cyclades

Cyclades

The Cyclades is a Greek island group in the Aegean Sea, south-east of the mainland of Greece; and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The name refers to the islands around the sacred island of Delos...

.

Modern town

The Ioulida of today, while popular with both tourists and middle-class Athenians, is relatively unspoiled in that cars must be left at the entrance of the town, and "life is pretty much the way it has always been." As in Korissia, "the architectural style is not like like the typical Cycladic. The heart of Chora is the square with the grand city hall."

Ancient town

The ancient city (also called Iulis) was celebrated as the birthplace of Simonides

Simonides

* Simonides of Ceos, , a lyric poet* Semonides of Amorgos, an iambic poet* Flavius Simonides Agrippa, son of Roman Jewish Historian Josephus* Constantine Simonides, 19th-century forger of 'ancient' manuscripts...

, Bacchylides

Bacchylides

Bacchylides was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets which included his uncle Simonides. The elegance and polished style of his lyrics have been a commonplace of Bacchylidean scholarship since at least Longinus...

, Prodicus

Prodicus

Prodicus of Ceos was a Greek philosopher, and part of the first generation of Sophists. He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos, and became known as a speaker and a teacher. Plato treats him with greater respect than the other sophists, and in several of the Platonic dialogues Socrates appears...

, Erasistratus

Erasistratus

Erasistratus was a Greek anatomist and royal physician under Seleucus I Nicator of Syria. Along with fellow physician Herophilus, he founded a school of anatomy in Alexandria, where they carried out anatomical research...

, and Aristo

Aristo of Ceos

Aristo of Ceos was a Peripatetic philosopher and a native of the island of Ceos, where his birthplace was the town of Ioulis. He is not to be confused with Aristo of Chios, a Stoic philosopher of the mid 3rd century BC....

; it was said to have been built by "Eupylos the son of Chryso the demi-goddess." It led a revolt against Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 in 364/3 BC; an Athenian decree has been preserved imposing a fine and punishing rebels, of which "ll. 27-42 contain 'the most formidably complex sentence so far to be found in classical Athenian decrees' (KJ Dover

Kenneth Dover

Sir Kenneth James Dover, FRSE, FBA was a distinguished British Classical scholar and academic, who was head of an Oxford college and from 1981 until his retirement in December 2005 was Chancellor of the University of St Andrews....

, TPS 1981, 1-14 at 8-11)." A nineteenth-century description says:

Iulis was situated on a hill about 25 stadia from the sea, in the northern part of the island, on the same site as the modern Zea, which is now the only town in the island. There are several remains of Iulis: the most important is a colossal lion, about 20 feet in length, which lies a quarter of an hour sast of the town.... The laws of Iulis were very celebrated in antiquity; and hence "Cean Laws" were used proverbially to indicate any excellent institutions... These laws related to the morals of the citizens and their mode of life. One of them quoted by Menander was particularly celebrated: ὀ μὴ δυνάμενος ζῆν καλῶς οὑ ζῇ κακῶς ["whoever cannot live well should (at least) not live badly"].

Under Roman rule it enjoyed political supremacy as well has being the main population center of the island. A process of nucleation reduced the number of population centers: "By the 2nd century BC the poleis of Koressos and Poieessa were absorbed by their neighbours Ioulis and Karthaia, and in the Late Roman period Karthaia ceased to exist, leaving Ioulis (Chora) as the single polis of the island." In the thirteenth century it seems to have been still the only town on the island.

Its ruins were visited by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort was a French botanist, notable as the first to make a clear definition of the concept of genus for plants.- Biography :...

in 1700 and identified by P. O. Brønsted in 1826.