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Sybaris
Sybaris (; ) was an important ancient Greek city situated on the coast of the Gulf of Taranto in modern Calabria, Italy. The city was founded around 720 BC by Achaeans (tribe), Achaean and Troezenian settlers and the Achaeans also went on to found the nearby great city of Crotone, Kroton 10 years later. Sybaris amassed great wealth thanks to its fertile land and busy port so that it was known as the wealthiest colony of the Greek Archaic world. Its inhabitants became famous among the Greeks for their hedonism, feasts, and excesses, to the extent that "sybarite" and "sybaritic" have become bywords for opulence, luxury, and outrageous pleasure-seeking. Sybaris also ruled over smaller colonies throughout the area, and had an ''acropolis'' at Timpone della Motta near Francavilla Marittima about 10 km distant. The city of Sybaris was destroyed in about 510 BC by its neighbour Kroton and its population driven out, but its colonies in the area continued to exist. It was replaced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by Greeks beginning in the 8th century BC. Initially founded by their ''metropoleis'' (mother cities), the settlements evolved into independent and powerful Greek city-states (''poleis''). The settlers brought with them Ancient Greece, Hellenic civilization, which over time developed distinct local forms due to both their distance from Greece and the influence of the indigenous peoples of southern Italy. This interaction left a lasting imprint on Italy, including on Ancient Rome, Roman culture. The Greek settlers also influenced native groups such as the Sicels and the Oenotrians, many of whom adopted Greek culture and became Hellenization, Hellenized. In areas like architecture and urban planning, the colonies sometimes surpassed the achievem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copia (ancient City)
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, under ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Calabria
Calabria is a Regions of Italy, region in Southern Italy. It is a peninsula bordered by the region Basilicata to the north, the Ionian Sea to the east, the Strait of Messina to the southwest, which separates it from Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. It has 1,832,147 residents as of 2025 across a total area of . Catanzaro is the region's capital. Calabria is the birthplace of the name of Italy, given to it by the Ancient Greeks who settled in this land starting from the 8th century BC. They established the first cities, mainly on the coast, as Greek colonisation, Greek colonies. During this period Calabria was the heart of Magna Graecia, home of key figures in history such as Pythagoras, Herodotus and Milo of Croton, Milo. In Roman times, it was part of the ''Regio III Lucania et Bruttii'', a region of Roman Italy, Augustan Italy. After the Gothic War (535–554), Gothic War, it became and remained for five centuries a Byzantine empire, Byzantine dominion, fully recove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paestum
Paestum ( , , ) was a major Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, in Magna Graecia. The ruins of Paestum are famous for their three ancient Greek temples in the Doric order dating from about 550 to 450 BCE that are in an excellent state of preservation. The city walls and amphitheatre are largely intact, and the bottom of the walls of many other structures remain, as well as paved roads. The site is open to the public, and there is a modern National Archaeological Museum of Paestum, national museum within it, which also contains the finds from the associated Greek site of Foce del Sele. Paestum was established around 600 BCE by settlers from Sybaris, a Greek colony in southern Italy, under the name of Poseidonia (). The city thrived as a Greek settlement for about two centuries, witnessing the development of democracy. In 400 BCE, the Lucani (ancient people), Lucanians seized the city. Ancient Rome, Romans took over in 273 BCE, renaming it Paestu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Timpone Della Motta
The Timpone della Motta is a hill 2 km to the southwest of Francavilla Marittima in Calabria, Italy that was inhabited since the Middle Bronze Age. In the Iron Age the hill was the site of an Oenotrians, Oenotrian settlement. The Oenotrians were influenced by the culture of the Greek colonists from nearby Sybaris, who eventually took over the site in the second half of the seventh century and transformed it into their acropolis and an important sanctuary, which was notable as the site of the first known ancient Greek temples of Magna Graecia on the Italian Peninsula. The hill was abandoned when the Bruttii, Bruttians conquered the region in the fourth century BC. Geography The hill is composed of Plio-Pleistocene fan-delta deposits containing thick beds of conglomerated river cobbles, which form its cap rock and several terraces along its slopes. With an elevation of 280 meters above sea level, it overlooks the coastal plain of Sibari and the Gulf of Taranto. It lies on the lef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Colonisation
Greek colonisation refers to the expansion of Archaic Greeks, particularly during the 8th–6th centuries BC, across the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. The Archaic expansion differed from the Iron Age migrations of the Greek Dark Ages, in that it consisted of organised direction (see ) away from the originating ''metropolis'' rather than the simplistic movement of tribes, which characterised the aforementioned earlier migrations. Many colonies, or (, ), that were founded during this period eventually evolved into strong Greek city-states, functioning independently of their ''metropolis''. Motives Greek colonisation was typically motivated by a combination of factors, depending on the context. Many Greek city-states experienced strong economic growth with consequent overpopulation of the motherland, such that the existing territory of these Greek city-states could no longer support a growing polity. The areas where the Greeks would try to colonise were hospitabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sibari
Sibari is an Italian ''frazione'' of the ''comune'' (municipality) of Cassano allo Ionio. It lies in the province of Cosenza which is part of the region Calabria. Geography It is located close to the Gulf of Taranto and the archaeological sites of the Ancient Greek cities of Sybaris and Thurii which can be found a few kilometers to the southeast of the town. It also has a train station. History It was founded in the 1960s. The town has grown after a program of land reclamation Land reclamation, often known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new Terrestrial ecoregion, land from oceans, list of seas, seas, Stream bed, riverbeds or lake .... In the 1980s and 1990s beach tourism developed in the town. The local agriculture produces citrus fruits, olives and rice. In recent years there have been numerous attempts to gain autonomy, which have failed. References External links Frazi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Troezen
Troezen (; ancient Greek: Τροιζήν, modern Greek: Τροιζήνα ) is a small town and a former municipality in the northeastern Peloponnese, Greece, on the Argolid Peninsula. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Troizinia-Methana, of which it is a municipal unit. It is part of the Islands regional unit. In the 2021 cencus it had a population of 4,668. Troezen is located southwest of Athens, across the Saronic Gulf, and a few miles south of Methana. The seat of the former municipality was in Galatas. Before 2011, Troizina was part of the Argolis and Korinthos prefecture from 1833 to 1925, Attica prefecture from 1925 to 1964, Piraeus Prefecture from 1964 to 1972 and then back in Attica prefecture (in antiquity it was part of Argolis). The municipality had a land area of 190.697 km2. Its largest towns and villages were Galatás, Kalloní, Troizína, Taktikoúpoli, Karatzás, Dryópi, Ágios Geórgios, and Agía Eléni. It included n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laüs
Laüs or Laus (; ) was an ancient city on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was at the mouth of the Lao River, which formed the boundary between Lucania and Bruttium in ancient times and gave it its name. The archaeological site of the city can be found at a short distance to the east of Marcellina, near Santa Maria del Cedro in Calabria. History Herodotus states that the inhabitants of Sybaris who had survived the destruction of their city in 510 BC took refuge in Laus and Scidrus. Silver coins were found with the legend LAFINON and symbols similar to those of the coins of Sybaris, dated between 500 and 440 BC. Diodorus Siculus implies that that city had been captured by the Lucanians before or during 390 BC. Thurii had repelled a force of the Lucanians which had attacked their territory in 390 BC. The Lucanians then withdrew to their own territory and Thurians pursued them to lay siege to the "prosperous" town of Laus but on the way the Thuri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Achaeans (tribe)
The Achaeans (; ) were one of the four major tribes into which Herodotus divided the Greeks, along with the Aeolians, Ionians and Dorians. They inhabited the region of Achaea in the northern Peloponnese, and played an active role in the colonization of Italy, founding important cities such as Sybaris, Kroton and Metapontum. Unlike the other major tribes, the Achaeans did not have a separate dialect in the Classical period, instead using a form of Doric. Etymology The etymology of the term Ἀχαιοί is unknown. Robert S. P. Beekes proposed that it originated in a Pre-Greek form''*Akaywa-''. Margalit Finkelberg, while acknowledging that its ultimate etymology is unknown, proposed an intermediate Greek form *Ἀχαϝyοί. The term Ἀχαιοί was also used by Homer to refer to Greeks as a whole, and may relate to the Hittite term ''Ahhiyawa'', believed to refer to Mycenaean Greece or part of it. History In the Classical era the Achaeans inhabited the region of Ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
