ELEA (ay-LAY-uh)
Ancient
town of Italy founded by the Greeks around 538-535 BC
Common
clues: Zeno's home; Zeno of ____; Parmenides' home; Whence Zeno;
Ancient Greek city; Parmenides's birthplace
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
2 times a year
Video: Zeno's
Paradoxes
Velia is the Italian (and Latin) name of the ancient town of Elea located on the territory of the commune of Ascea, Salerno, Campania, Italy in a geographical sub-area named Cilento. Originally founded by the Greeks as Hyele in Magna Graecia around 538–535 BC, it is best known as the home of the philosophers Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, as well as the Eleatic school of which they were a part. The site of the Acropolis of ancient Elea, once a promontory (castello a mare, meaning "castle on the sea") and now inland, was renamed in the Middle Ages Castellammare della Bruca.
According to Herodotus, in 545 BC Ionian Greeks fled Phocaea, in modern Turkey, which was being besieged by the Persians. After some wanderings (8 to 10 years) at sea, they stopped in Reggio Calabria, where they were probably joined by Xenophanes, who was at the time at Messina, and then moved north along the coast and founded the town of Hyele, later renamed Ele and then, eventually, Elea. The location is nearly at the same latitude as Phocaea.
Elea was not conquered by the Lucanians, but eventually joined Rome in 273 BC and was included in ancient Lucania. According to Virgil's Aeneid, Velia is the place where the body of Palinurus washed ashore.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Velia".
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