Dionysius The Elder
Dionysius I or Dionysius the Elder ( 432 – 367 BC) was a Greek tyrant of Syracuse, Sicily. He conquered several cities in Sicily and southern Italy, opposed Carthage's influence in Sicily and made Syracuse the most powerful of the Western Greek colonies. He was regarded by the ancients as the worst kind of despot: cruel, suspicious, and vindictive. Endnotes: * Diod. Sic. xiii., xiv., xv. *J. Bass, ''Dionysius I. von Syrakus'' (Vienna, 1881), with full references to authorities in footnotes Early life Dionysius began his working life as a clerk in a public office. Because of his achievements in the war against Carthage that began in 409 BC, he was elected supreme military commander in 406 BC. In the following year he seized total power and became tyrant. He was married to Aristomache, and had a daughter by her, Arete. He was married at the same time to Doris of Locris, who bore him his son, Dionysius II of Syracuse. Rise to power Dionysius seized power with the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ancient Athens
Athens is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for perhaps 5,000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of ancient Greece in the first millennium BC, and its cultural achievements during the 5th century BC laid the foundations of Western world, Western civilization. The earliest evidence for human habitation in Athens dates back to the Neolithic period. The Acropolis of Athens, Acropolis served as a fortified center during the Mycenaean Greece, Mycenaean era. By the 8th century BC, Athens had evolved into a prominent city-state, or Polis, ''polis'', within the region of Attica. The 7th and 6th centuries BC saw the establishment of legal codes, such as those by Draco (legislator), Draco, Solon and Cleisthenes, which aimed to address social inequalities and set the stage for the development of democracy. In the early 5th century BC, Athens played a central role in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Etruscan Civilization
The Etruscan civilization ( ) was an ancient civilization created by the Etruscans, a people who inhabited Etruria in List of ancient peoples of Italy, ancient Italy, with a common language and culture, and formed a federation of city-states. After adjacent lands had been conquered its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roughly what is now Tuscany, western Umbria and northern Lazio, as well as what are now the Po Valley, Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy, southern Veneto and western Campania. A large body of literature has flourished on the origins of the Etruscans, but the consensus among modern scholars is that the Etruscans were an indigenous population. The earliest evidence of a culture that is identifiably Etruscan dates from about 900 BC. This is the period of the Iron Age Villanovan culture, considered to be the earliest phase of Etruscan civilization, which itself developed from the previous late Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture in the same region, p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Caere
: Caere (also Caisra and Cisra) is the Latin name given by the Romans to one of the larger cities of southern Etruria, the modern Cerveteri, approximately 50–60 kilometres north-northwest of Rome. To the Etruscans it was known as Cisra, to the Greeks as Agylla and to the Phoenicians as 𐤊𐤉𐤔𐤓𐤉𐤀 (). Caere was one of the most important and populous Etruscan city-states, in area 15 times larger than today's town, and only Tarquinia was equal in power at its height around 600 BC. Caere was also one of the cities of the Etruscan League. Its sea port and monumental sanctuary at Pyrgi was important for overseas trade. Today, the area of Cerveteri is best known for its Etruscan necropolis and archaeological treasures. Geography The ancient city was situated on a hill about 7 km from the sea, a location which made it a wealthy trading town derived originally from the iron ore mines in the Tolfa hills. It had three sea ports including Pyrgi and Punicum. It w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Siege Of Rhegium
The siege of Rhegium was undertaken in 387 BC by a Syracusan force against the city of Rhegium. The Syracusans were led by the tyrant Dionysius I.The Oxford Illustrated History of Greece and the Hellenistic World'. Italy, Oxford University Press, 2001. 419. Dionysius took the city, and sold its inhabitants into slavery. Rhegium had allied with Carthage against Syracuse during the Third Sicilian War because Syracuse was a rival in Magna Graecia and both wanted to control the Strait of Messina. Now that Syracuse and Carthage had secured peace, Dionysius wanted revenge on Rhegium. Dionysius invaded the mainland crushing Rhegium’s ally, the Italiote League of Taurentum, at the Battle of the Elleporus. He then besieged, captured and sacked Rhegium, selling its inhabitants into slavery. Rhegium would eventually be re-founded by Dionysius II. References 380s BC conflicts Rhegium Reggio di Calabria (; ), commonly and officially referred to as Reggio Calabria, or sim ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Locri
Locri is a town and ''comune'' (municipality) in the province of Reggio Calabria, Calabria, southern Italy. Its name derives from that of the ancient Greek region of Locris. Today it is an important administrative and cultural center on the Ionian Coast and within its province. History Epizephyrian Locris or Locri Epizephyrii (; from the plural of (, "a Locrian"), (, "on"), (, " West Wind"), thus "the Western Locrians") was founded about 680 BC on the Italian shore of the Ionian Sea, near modern Capo Zefirio, by the Locrians, apparently by Opuntii (East Locrians) from the city of Opus, but including Ozolae (West Locrians) and Lacedaemonians. Its Latin name, ''Locri'', is the plural of the Latin ''Locrus'', which was used both to mean an inhabitant of Locris and the eponymous ancestor of the Locrians. Strabo suggests that the Ozolian Locrians were the principal founders, while Ephorus held that the Locri was a colony of Opuntian Locris. Due to fierce winds at an o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crotone
Crotone (; ; or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Calabria, Italy. Founded as the Achaean colony of Kroton ( or ; ), it became a great Greek city, home of the renowned mathematician-philosopher Pythagoras amongst other famous citizens, and one of the most important centres of Magna Graecia. It was known as Cotrone from the Middle Ages until 1928, when its name was changed to the current one. In 1992, it became the capital of the newly established Province of Crotone. History The promontory of Kroton was inhabited by indigenous populations, perhaps Oenotrians and Japigi, in the Bronze Age and early Iron Age. Foundation Kroton's '' oikistes'' (founder) was Myscellus, from the city of Rhypes in Achaea in the northern Peloponnese, after consulting the Delphic Oracle who announced: :''Cross the vast sea and next to the Esaro (river) you will found Kroton.'' The Achaeans were motivated, like others of the Greek colonisation, by the lack of cultivatable land in their mounta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thurii
Thurii (; ; ), called also by some Latin writers Thūrium (compare , in Ptolemy), and later in Roman times also Cōpia and Cōpiae, was an ancient Greek city situated on the Gulf of Taranto, near or on the site of the great renowned city of Sybaris, whose place it may be considered as having taken. The ruins of the city can be found in the Sybaris archaeological park near Sibari in the Province of Cosenza, Calabria, Italy. History Foundation Thurii was founded as a colony of Athens along with exiles from Sybaris in 443 BC. Justin writes that people say that the city of Thurii was built by Philoctetes and his monument is seen there even to his days, as well as the arrows of Hercules which laid up in the temple of Apollo. The site of that city had remained desolate for a period of 58 years after its destruction by the Crotoniats; when at length, in 452 BC, a number of the Sybarite exiles and their descendants made an attempt to establish themselves again on the spot, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Italiote League
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 Nomae in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carthaginians
The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people, Semitic people who Phoenician settlement of North Africa, migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Iron Age, Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'', the Latin equivalent of the Greek-derived term ''Phoenician'', is exclusively used to refer to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean, following the line of the Greek East and Latin West. The largest Punic settlement was Ancient Carthage, but there were 300 other settlements along the North African coast from Leptis Magna in modern Libya to Mogador in southern Morocco, as well as western Sicily, southern Sardinia, the southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic language, Punic, was a variety of Phoenician language, Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant. Literary sources report two moment ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sicilian Wars
The Sicilian Wars, or Greco-Punic Wars, were a series of conflicts fought between ancient Carthage and the List of ancient Greek cities, Greek city-states led by Syracuse, Sicily, Syracuse over control of Sicily and the western Mediterranean between 580 and 265 BC. Carthage's economic success and its dependence on seaborne trade led to the creation of a powerful navy to discourage both pirates and rival nations. They had inherited their naval strength and experience from their forebears, the Phoenicians, but had increased it because, unlike the Phoenicians, the Punics did not want to rely on a foreign nation's aid. This, coupled with its success and growing hegemony, brought Carthage into increasing conflict with the Greeks, the other major power contending for control of the central Mediterranean. The Greeks, like the Phoenicians, were expert sailors who had established thriving colonies throughout the Mediterranean. These two rivals fought their wars on the island of Sicily, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dionysius Of Syracuse Military Expedition For Alcetas Map (English)
The name Dionysius (; ''Dionysios'', "of Dionysus"; ) was common in classical and post-classical times. Etymologically it is a nominalized adjective formed with a -ios suffix from the stem Dionys- of the name of the Greek god, Dionysus, parallel to Apollon-ios from Apollon, with meanings of Dionysos' and Apollo's, etc. The exact beliefs attendant on the original assignment of such names remain unknown. Regardless of the language of origin of Dionysos and Apollon, the -ios/-ius suffix is associated with a full range of endings of the first and second declension in the Greek and Latin languages. The names may thus appear in ancient writing in any of their cases. Dionysios itself refers only to males. The feminine version of the name is Dionysia, nominative case, in both Greek and Latin. The name of the plant and the festival, Dionysia, is the neuter plural nominative, which looks the same in English from both languages. Dionysiou is the masculine and neuter genitive case of the Gree ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |