[2] The foundation of the new city is placed by Diodorus in 432 BCE, fourteen years after the settlement of Thurii; a statement which appears to agree well with the above narrative, cited by Strabo from Antiochus of Syracuse.

[5] The new colony appears to have risen rapidly to power and prosperity, protected by the fostering care of the Tarentines, who were at one time engaged in war with the Messapians for its defence.

[6] But beyond the general fact that it enjoyed great wealth and prosperity, advantages which it doubtless owed to the noted fertility of its territory, we have scarcely any information concerning the history of Heraclea until we reach a period when it was already beginning to decline.

Hence, when Alexander, king of Epirus, who had been invited to Italy by the Tarentines, subsequently became hostile to that people, he avenged himself by taking Heraclea, and, as already mentioned, transferred to the Thurians the general assemblies that had previously been held there.

[11] We have no account of the part taken by Heraclea in the Social War; but from an incidental notice in Cicero, that all the public records of the city had been destroyed by fire at that period, it would seem to have suffered severely.

[12] Cicero nevertheless speaks of it, in his defence of the poet Aulus Licinius Archias (who had been adopted as a citizen of Heraclea), as still a flourishing and important town, and it appears to have been one of the few Greek cities in the south of Italy that still preserved their consideration under the Roman dominion.

Heraclea is generally regarded as the native country of the celebrated painter Zeuxis, though there is much doubt to which of the numerous cities of the name that distinguished artist really owed his birth.