Heraclea Lucania

Heraclea ( Latin form: Heraclea ) was an ancient city in Lucania, near the present-day Policoro, five kilometers from the coast of the Gulf of Taranto, between the rivers Agri ( Aciris ) and Siris ( Sinni ), about 23 km south-southwest of Metapontum.

History

Heraclea was a Greek colony, which was founded in 432 BC by Tarentum and Thurii out, with the former dominating. After the fall of the city of Croton was determined as the meeting place of the Italiote Federation, the General Assembly of the Greeks in Italy who wanted to move Alexander I of Epirus after his expulsion from Taranto to Thurii. King Pyrrhus of Epirus hit here in 280 BC the Roman consul Publius Valerius Laevinus after he had crossed the river Siris ( Battle of Heraclea ). 278 BC, perhaps 282 BC, the Romans concluded a contract with Heraclea, possibly to release it from Taranto, with such favorable terms that 89 BC, the Roman citizenship, the lex Plautia Papiria the inhabitants, granted, was only reluctantly accepted. 212 BC Heraclea surrendered under duress Hannibal and the Social War burned the State Archives. Cicero speaks in his speech in defense of the poet Archias, an adopted citizen of Heraclea, of a thriving city. As a consequence of Roman citizenship Heraclea was municipium; the portion of the transcript of the lex Iulia municipalis of 46 BC ( engraved on the back of two bronze plaques on the front of a Greek inscription from the 3rd century BC, which describes the country's borders and land ownership of the various temple ), which was found between Heraclea and Metapontum, is of the utmost importance for the knowledge of the law.

Heraclea had some significance, an offshoot of the Strait of Venusia met here on the coast road in the Roman Empire. The circumstances of the destruction and abandonment of the city are unknown, the place is now marked only by a heap of ruins. Its medieval successor was Anglona, then a bishop's see, now only a pile of rubble, including a church from the 11th century.

Museum and Archaeological Park

Today, north of the modern city Policoro in the Museo nazionale della archeologico Siritide the finds of excavations of Heraclea issued whose foundations can be seen in the nearby Parco Archeologico.

Coins found

Ceramics

Ceramics