Iolcos (also known as Iolkos or Iolcus, Greek: Ιωλκός) is an ancient city, a modern village and a former municipality in Magnesia, Thessaly, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Volos, of which it is a municipal unit. It is located in central Magnesia, north of the Pagasitic Gulf. Its land area is only 1.981 km². The municipal unit is divided into three communities with a total population of 2,071. Its Ágios Onoúfrios district has a land area of 0.200 km². The district has a population of 506 inhabitants.

The municipal seat is the village of Áno Vólos (pop. 529). The small town of Anakasia (pop. 933) was the seat of the municipality of Iolkos. Anakasia has a school, a lyceum, a gymnasium, banks, a post office and a square (plateia). The only other villages are Ágios Onoúfrios (pop. 506), and Iolkós (103).

According to ancient Greek mythology Aeson was the rightful king of Iolcos, but his half-brother Pelias usurped the throne. It was Pelias who sent Aeson's son Jason and his Argonauts to look for the Golden Fleece. The ship Argo set sail from Iolcos with a crew of fifty demigods and princes under Jason's leadership. Their mission was to reach Colchis in Aea at the eastern seaboard of the Black Sea and reclaim and bring back the Golden Fleece, a symbol of the opening of new trade routes. Along with the Golden Fleece Jason brought a wife, the sorceress Medea, king Aeetes' daughter, granddaughter of the Sun, niece of Circe, princess of Aea, and later queen of Iolcos, Corinth and Aea, and also slayer of her brother Apsyrtus and her two sons from Jason, a tragic figure whose trials and tribulations were artfully dramatized in the much staged Euripides' Medea.

Anthimos Gazis (or Gazes; Ἄνθιμος Γαζῆς; 1758, Milies – 1828, Ermoupoli, Syros) was a scholar, a philosopher during the Greek Enlightenment, a cartographer and one of the heroes of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. He was born in Milies (Thessalia) in Ottoman Greece in 1758 and died in 1828. His real name was Anastasios Gazalis (Ἀναστάσιος Γκάζαλης).

Gazis studied in Greece and then he went to Constantinople where he was ordained priest.He became rector of the Greek Church of Vienna in 1797. In 1811 he received his Diploma from the “Philological Institute of Bucharest”. In 1813 Gazis was elected a Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. His efforts were concentrated to the development of a higher education system in Greece.

He was the editor of the very first periodical in Greek, Hermes o Logios, published in Vienna. In 1799, he translated and published the Benjamin Martin’s “Philosophical Grammar”.

Gazis published in 1800 Vienna a map of Greece and the Balkans called Pinax Geographikos tes Hellados (Πίναξ Γεωγραφικὸς τῆς Ἑλλάδος). It is a reduced edition of the famous map of Rigas Feraios (the Charta of Greece). He edited also a worldmap called Atlas e Chartes [...] hydrogeiou..., owned today by the National Library of Australia.