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Heraclea Lucania
Heraclea, also Heracleia or Herakleia (), was an ancient city. It was situated on the Gulf of Taranto between the rivers Aciris (modern Agri) and Siris (modern Sinni). The ruins of the city are located in the modern ''comune'' of Policoro in the Province of Matera, Basilicata, Italy. History It was a Greek colony, but founded at a period considerably later than most of the other Greek cities in this part of Italy. The territory in which it was established had previously belonged to the Ionic colony of Siris, and after the fall of that city seems to have become the subject of contention between the neighboring states. The Athenians had a claim upon the territory of Siris, and it was probably in virtue of this that their colonists the Thurians, almost immediately after their establishment in Italy, advanced similar pretensions. These were, however, resisted by the Tarentines; and war ensued between the two states, which was at length terminated by an arrangement that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Policoro
Policoro ( Lucano: ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Matera, in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata. With some 18,000 inhabitants, is bounded by the towns of Rotondella, Scanzano Jonico and Tursi. Situated on the coast, its population swells in the summertime due to an influx of tourists who come to enjoy the Lido di Policoro. History The ruins of the ancient Heraclea (also Heracleia or Herakleia) are located in the modern comune of Policoro. The city of Heraclea was founded in 434 BC by colonists coming from Taras (present-day Taranto) and Thurii. In very little time, it became richer and more famous than the nearby town Siris. In 280 BCE, the Battle of Heraclea happened there during the war between Taranto and Rome. The Tables of Heraclea date back to this period and they are now located in the Archeology Museum of Naples. These ancient bronze tablets contain texts in Greek and Latin that discuss public and constitutional rules and laws of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stadia (length)
The stadion (plural stadia, ; latinized as stadium), also anglicized as stade, was an ancient Greek unit of length, consisting of 600 Ancient Greek feet ('' podes''). Its exact length is unknown today; historians estimate it at between 150 m and 210 m. Calculations According to Herodotus, one stadium was equal to 600 Greek feet (''podes''). However, the length of the foot varied in different parts of the Greek world, and the length of the stadion has been the subject of argument and hypothesis for hundreds of years. An empirical determination of the length of the stadion was made by Lev Vasilevich Firsov, who compared 81 distances given by Eratosthenes and Strabo with the straight-line distances measured by modern methods, and averaged the results. He obtained a result of about . Various equivalent lengths have been proposed, and some have been named. Among them are: Which measure of the stadion is used can affect the interpretation of ancient texts. For example, the err ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (50927 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC476 AD) until the fall of the western empire. Ancient Rome began as an Italic peoples, Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian peninsula. The settlement grew into the city and polity of Rome, and came to control its neighbours through a combination of treaties and military strength. It eventually controlled the Italian Peninsula, assimilating the Greece, Greek culture of southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and the Etruscans, Etruscan culture, and then became the dominant power in the Mediterranean region and parts of Europe. At its hei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pyrrhus Of Epirus
Pyrrhus ( ; ; 319/318–272 BC) was a Greeks, Greek king and wikt:statesman, statesman of the Hellenistic period.Plutarch. ''Parallel Lives'',Pyrrhus... He was king of the Molossians, of the royal Aeacidae, Aeacid house, and later he became king (John Malalas, Malalas also called him toparch) of Epirus (ancient state), Epirus. He was one of the strongest opponents of early Roman Republic, Rome, and had been regarded as one of the greatest generals of antiquity. Several of his victorious battles caused him unacceptably heavy losses, from which the phrase "Pyrrhic victory" was coined. Pyrrhus became king of Epirus in 306 BC at the age of 13, but was dethroned by Cassander four years later. He saw action during the Wars of the Diadochi and regained his throne in 297 BC with the support of Ptolemy I Soter. During the eponymous Pyrrhic War of 280–275 BC, Pyrrhus fought Rome at the behest of Taranto, Tarentum, scoring costly victories at Battle of Heraclea, Heraclea and Battle of A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucanians
The Lucanians () were an Italic tribe living in Lucania, in what is now southern Italy, who spoke the Oscan language, a member of the Italic languages. Today, the inhabitants of the Basilicata region are still called Lucani, and so is their dialect. Language and writing The Lucani spoke the Oscan language. There are a few inscriptions and coins in the area that survive from the 4th or 3rd century BC; they use the Greek alphabet. History Around the middle of the 5th century BC, the Lucani moved south into Oenotria, driving the indigenous tribes, known to the Greeks as Oenotrians, Chones, and Lauternoi, into the mountainous interior. The Lucanians were engaged in hostilities with the Greek colony of Taras/Tarentum and with Alexander, king of Epirus who was called in by the Tarentine people to their assistance in 334 BC. In 331, treacherous Lucanian exiles killed Alexander of Epirus. In 298 they made alliance with Rome, and Roman influence was extended by the colonies o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epirus
Epirus () is a Region#Geographical regions, geographical and historical region, historical region in southeastern Europe, now shared between Greece and Albania. It lies between the Pindus Mountains and the Ionian Sea, stretching from the Bay of Vlorë and the Ceraunian Mountains, Acroceraunian Mountains in the north to the Ambracian Gulf and the ruined Roman Empire, Roman city of Nicopolis in the south.. It is currently divided between the Modern regions of Greece, region of Epirus (region), Epirus in northwestern Greece and the counties of Gjirokastër County, Gjirokastër and Vlorë County, Vlorë in southern Albania. The largest city in Epirus is Ioannina, seat of the Greek region of Epirus, with Gjirokastër the largest city in the Albanian part of Epirus. A rugged and mountainous region, Epirus was the north-west area of ancient Greece. It was inhabited by the Greek tribes of the Chaonians, Molossians, and Thesprotians. It was home to the sanctuary of Dodona, the oldest o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Of Epirus
Alexander I of Epirus (; c. 370 BC – 331 BC), also known as Alexander Molossus (), was a king of Epirus (343/2–331 BC) of the Aeacid dynasty.Ellis, J. R., ''Philip II and Macedonian Imperialism'', Thames and Hudson, 1976, pp. 90–1, 156–7 As the son of Neoptolemus I and brother of Olympias, Alexander I was an uncle, and a brother-in-law, of Alexander the Great. He was also an uncle to Pyrrhus of Epirus. Biography Neoptolemus I ruled jointly with his brother Arybbas. When Neoptolemus died in c. 357 BC, his son Alexander was only a child and Arrybas became the sole king. In c. 350 BC, Alexander was brought to the court of Philip II of Macedon in order to protect him. In 343/2 in his late 20s, Philip made him king of Epirus, after dethroning his uncle Arybbas. When Olympias was repudiated by her husband in 337 BC, she went to her brother, and endeavoured to induce him to make war on Philip. Alexander, however, declined the contest, and formed a second alli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italiotes
The Italiotes (, ') were the pre- Roman Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Italian Peninsula, between Naples and Calabria. Greek colonisation of the coastal areas of southern Italy and Sicily started in the 8th century BC and, by the time of the Roman ascendance, the area was so extensively hellenized that Romans called it ''Magna Graecia'', that is "Greater Greece". The Latin alphabet is a derivative of the Western Greek alphabet used by these settlers, and was picked up and adopted and modified first by the Etruscans and then by the Romans. See also * Italiote league * Ancient peoples of Italy * Battle of Pandosia * Greek coinage of Italy and Sicily * Italiot Greek: modern dialects * Magna Graecia * Milo of Croton * Phlyax play * Siceliotes * Sicels The Sicels ( ; or ''Siculī'') were an Indo-European tribe who inhabited eastern Sicily, their namesake, during the Iron Age. They spoke the Siculian language. After the defeat of the Sicels at the Battle of N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Messapians
The Messapians were an Iapygian tribe who inhabited Salento in classical antiquity. Two other Iapygian tribes, the Peucetians and the Daunians, inhabited central and northern Apulia respectively. All three tribes spoke the Messapian language, but had developed separate archaeological cultures by the seventh century BC. The Messapians lived in the eponymous region Messapia, which extended from Leuca in the southeast to Kailia and Egnatia in the northwest, covering most of the Salento peninsula. This region includes the Province of Lecce and parts of the provinces of Brindisi and Taranto today. Starting in the third century BC, Greek and Roman writers distinguished the indigenous population of the Salento peninsula differently. According to Strabo, the names ''Iapygians'', ''Daunians'', ''Peucetians'' and ''Messapians'' were exclusively Greek and not used by the natives, who divided the Salento in two parts. The southern and Ionian part of the peninsula was the territory of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos (; BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, Western philosophy. Modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but most agree that he travelled to Croton in southern Italy around 530 BC, where he founded a school in which initiates were allegedly sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. In antiquity, Pythagoras was credited with mathematical and scientific discoveries, such as the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the theory of proportions, the sphericity of the Earth, the identity of the morning and evening stars as the planet Venus, and the division of the globe into five climatic zones. He was reputedly the first man to call himself a philosopher ("lover of wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliny The Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic (''Natural History''), a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume ''Bella Germaniae'' ("The History of the German Wars"), which is Lost literary work, no longer extant. ''Bella Germaniae'', which began where Aufidius Bassus' ''Libri Belli Germanici'' ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus may have used ''Bella Ger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Livy
Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on good terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and was a friend of Augustus. Livy encouraged Augustus’s young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, to take up the writing of history. Life Livy was born in Patavium in northern Italy, now modern Padua, probably in 59 BC. At the time of his birth, his home city of Patavium was the second wealthiest on the Italian peninsula, and the largest in the province of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy). Cisalpine Gaul was merged into Italy proper during his lifetime and its inhabitants were given Roman citizenship by Julius Caesar. In his works, Livy often expressed his deep affection and pride for Patavium, and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
