Hybla Gereatis

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Hybla Gereatis (Greek: Ὕβλα ἡ Γελεᾶτις), was an ancient city of Magna Graecia in Sicily, located on the southern slope of Mount Etna, not far from the river Symaethus, in the modern comune of Paternò. There were at least three (and possibly as many as five) cities named "Hybla" in ancient accounts of Sicily which are often confounded with each other, and which it is sometimes very difficult to distinguish. Hybla Gereatis has been described as the largest and most considerable of the Sicilian cities called Hybla, thence equated with Hybla Major or Magna.

Pausanias (in whose time it had ceased to be an independent city) described the city as situated in the territory of Catana (modern Catania). In like manner, we find it noticed by Thucydides as a place between Catana and Centuripa (modern Centuripe), so that the Athenians, on their return from an expedition to the latter city, ravaged the corn fields of the Inessaeans and Hyblaeans. It was clearly a Siculian city; and hence, at an earlier period, it is mentioned among the other towns of that people in the interior of the island which Ducetius sought to unite into a common league, a measure to which the Hyblaeans alone refused to accede...