Listed 4 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "IPPONION Ancient city CALABRIA".
A city of the toe of Italy dominating from the S the modern Tyrrhenian
Golfo di S. Eufemio. As a colony of Lokroi Epizephyroi it had the name Hipponion,
which may contain an element of an older name; at all events a connection with
horses is hard to find. Its foundation date is uncertain; no very early material
has been found, and it has even been suggested that it was founded as a consequence
of the destruction of Sybaris in 510 B.C. But Medma, its sister colony, existed
before the middle of the 6th c., and a late 7th c. date for both seems the most
probable.
Hipponion revolted from its mother city in 422 (Thuc. 5.5); prior
to this time owing to protection by the tyrants of Syracuse, it seems to have
flourished (Ath. 12.542a). Being well developed and fortified, it now made a successful
but short-lived bid for independence. A little later (388 B.C.) it took part with
other cities of Italy in the battle of the Helleporus against Dionysios of Syracuse
because Lokri had allied itself with him (Polyb. 1.6.2; Diod. 14.103-7). Following
Dionysios' victory, Hipponion was destroyed and its citizenry moved to Syracuse,
while its lands were given to Lokri (Diod. 14.107). In 379 the Carthaginians,
being at war with Syracuse, helped the Hipponiates rebuild their city (Diod. 15.24).
But the destruction of Dionysios' empire in 356 opened the way to the Bruttii,
who moved down from the mountains to attack the Greek cities. Hipponion was one
of the first to fall, sometime between 356 and 345 (Diod. 16.15). Thereafter the
Bruttii held the place and seem, from the evidence of coins and inscriptions,
to have thrived until the Romans sent a Latin colony there in 192 B.C. (Livy 34.53.1;
35.40.5-6). This was composed of 3700 infantry and 300 cavalry under the tresviri
Q. Naevius, M. Minucius, and M. Furius Crassipes; each infantryman received 15
iugera of land, each cavalryman 30. The colony took the name Valentia, later Vibo
Valentia, the first element possibly the Bruttian corruption of the name of Hipponion.
In its Romanized form the city was governed by quattuorviri, responsible
to a senate. It coined its own money and prospered. After the social war it was
inscribed in the tribus Aemilia. We hear of it from time to time in the civil
wars, especially in connection with Octavian war against Sextus Pompey when it
was one of his most important bases of operations. Owing to the proximity of the
great Sila forests, Vibo seems to have been a center of ship-building during the
Empire as well as an important exporter of timber.
During excavations in 1916-17 and 1921, a stretch of the N front of
the fortifications was laid bare for 225 m, and the foundations of two temples
and a sanctuary were brought to light. The walls are of large squared blocks of
calcareous sandstone laid in alternating courses of headers and stretchers, built
solid in the curtains, an average of 2.8 m thick. They are interrupted at regular
intervals of ca. 40 m by semicircular towers mounted on square bases, ca. 10 m
on a side. One tower, at a point where the wall turns, is two-thirds of a circle,
and one guarding a sally port virtually a full circle. In front of the walls was
found a fossa 4.5 m wide, 3.25 m deep. Four periods of construction have been
construed in what is preserved. The earliest, not earlier than the 4th c., is
perhaps best ascribed to the time when Agathokles of Syracuse briefly seized the
city back from the Bruttii in 294 B.C. (Diod. 21.8). The second wall, of rubblework
imbedded in clay mortar with facings of rough stonework, has been ascribed to
the Bruttii. The third, that with the semicircular towers and isodomic curtains,
must then be the wall of the Latin colony of 192; its high sophistication will
permit no earlier date. And the fourth, a repair or remodeling of the third, must
then belong to the 1st c. B.C., the troubled times of the Roman revolution.
Substantial remains of two temples were found. The one on the height
of the Belvedere (or Telegrafo), dominating the sea, was reduced to only a portion
of its foundations, but the plan could be recovered. It was peripteral (37.45
x 20.5 m in over-all dimensions) with a shallow pronaos and a squarish adyton
or opisthodomus. It seems to have been Doric with terracotta revetment of the
roof, notably a lateral sima with lion's-head spouts. Votive material was scarce
but ran from the archaic period to the Hellenistic.
The second temple, also peripteral (27.5 x 18.1 m in over-all dimensions)
was found on the height known as Cofino. The cella was relatively short and can
have been preceded by only a token pronaos. Fragments of the columns and their
bases showed that it was Ionic, and this was confirmed by the style of the lateral
sima in fine limestone. A 5th c. date for this has been proposed.
A third sacred building was discovered at Coltura del Castello on
the presumed acropolis of the city, the substructions of a small temple together
with a mass of figured terracottas; the presence of a large temple nearby was
indicated by fragments of a colossal terracotta gorgoneion, 1.10 m in diameter.
Vibo was some distance from the sea and must have had its port at
the site now known as Porto S. Venere, but little is known about it. At the site
of Torre Galli, ca. 16 km W of Vibo, a necropolis has come to light that shows
a native population in contact with the Greeks from the late 7th c. (Late Protocorinthian
vases) and a gradually increasing hellenization down into the second half of the
6th c., when the graves stop. This makes an illuminating example of the influence
Hipponion exerted and an interesting study in itself.
The Collezione Capialbi in Vibo was formed locally, and the majority
of the material belongs to the site and its dependencies; the Collezione Cordopatri,
also made chiefly at Vibo, is now in the Museo Nazionale at Reggio Calabria.
L. Richardson, Jr., ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Now Bivona; the Roman form of the Greek name Hipponium, a town situated on the southwest coast of Bruttium, and on a gulf called after it Sinus Vibonensis, or Hipponiates. It is said to have been founded by the Locri Epizephyrii; but it was destroyed by the elder Dionysius, who transplanted its inhabitants to Syracuse. It was afterwards restored; and at a later time it fell into the hands of the Bruttii, together with the other Greek cities on this coast. It was taken from the Bruttii by the Romans, who colonized it B.C. 194, and called it Vibo Valentia. Cicero speaks of it as a municipium; and in the time of Augustus it was one of the most flourishing cities in the south of Italy.
This text is cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Receive our daily Newsletter with all the latest updates on the Greek Travel industry.
Subscribe now!
