Temesa

History

According to Strabo it was founded by the Ausones, an Italic tribe, and was settled by Aetolian Greeks under Thoas later. It came under the control of Sybaris at some later point, but passed to Croton after it defeated Sybaris in 510/09 BC. Locri conquered Temesa at some time in the first half of the fifth century BC, probably in the 480s or 470s. Croton was disadvantaged by the loss because Temesa had valuable copper mines and opportunities for trade with the north. It founded Terina close to Temesa at this time to compensate.

Croton probably did not lose control of Temesa for long, because Temesan coins from the middle of the fifth century BC still carry Croton's tripod symbol. Based on the coins La Torre concludes that Locri's invasion did not result in the conquest of Temesa, but De Sensi Sestito disagrees with this conclusion. She thinks an unsuccessful invasion would not have explained the failure to rebuild the excavated temple or the larger decline of Temesa and its eclipse by Terina. The coins do not cover the precise period of 480 to 460 BC, and some coins from this period have Temesa's legend erased and replaced with a legend of Croton. This suggests that Croton continued to recognize and validate Temesa's coinage, but that it did not exercise control over the city itself. Nicholson thus concludes that Locri controlled Temesa possibly from around 480 to the late 460s BC.

In 194 BC the city became a colonia of the Roman Republic after the Romans had driven out the Bruttians, who had taken the city from the Greeks. Pausanias notes that the city was still inhabited in his own time, the second century AD. Its copper mines had already been exhausted by the time Strabo was writing, around the end of the first century BC.

Pausanias also relates a ghost story which took place in Temesa. It was said that Odysseus was carried down to the shores of Italy and Sicily by storms after the sack of Troy. Temesa was one of the cities he visited. Here one of his sailors got drunk and raped a local woman, for which he was stoned to death by the inhabitants. Odysseus was indifferent to this and sailed away. …