A colony in southern Sicily founded by Cretan and Rhodian colonists c 688 BC, whose inhabitants founded Acragas (now Agrigento) in c 581 BC. Gela was prosperous under the tyrant Hippocrates of Gela (498-491 BC), and his powerful successor, Gelon, who transferred his capital and half of the Gela population to Syracuse in 482 BC. Gela was refounded in 466 BC, but it was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 405 BC and abandoned by order of Dionysius I the Elder of Syracuse. It was refounded in the 4th century and again in 1233 by Frederick II, known as Terranova di Sicilia until 1928.