[10] Trachis (as Trachin) is mentioned in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad by Homer as one of the cities subject to Achilles,[11] and is celebrated in the legends of Herakles as the scene of his death.

The Trachinians (a tribe of the Malians) and the neighbouring Dorians, who suffered much from the predatory incursions of the Oetaean mountaineers, solicited aid from the Spartans, who eagerly availed themselves of this opportunity to plant a strong colony in this commanding situation.

They issued an invitation to the other Dorian states of Greece to join in the colony; and as many as 10,000 colonists, under three Spartan oecists (Leon, Alcidas, and Damagon), built and fortified a new town, to which the name of Heraclea was given, from the great hero, whose name was so closely associated with the surrounding district.

It was attacked from the beginning by the Thessalians, who regarded its establishment as an invasion of their territory; and the Spartans, who rarely succeeded in the government of dependencies, displayed haughtiness and corruption in its administration.

Six years after its founding a battle took place between the inhabitants of Heraclea and the assembled forces of the Aenianes, Dolopes, Malians, and Thessalians who were directly menaced by the colony.

Sparta was unable at the time to send assistance to their colony; the Heracleots were defeated, and the town so reduced that in the following year, the Boeotians occupied it to prevent it falling into Athenian hands, and dismissed the Lacedaemonian governor, on the ground of misconduct.

[19] In 395 BC, the Thebans, under the command of Ismenias, wrested this important place from the Spartans, killed the Lacedaemonian garrison, and gave the city to the old Trachinian and Oetaean inhabitants.

After the defeat of Antiochus III at the Battle of Thermopylae (191 BC), Heraclea was besieged by the Roman consul Acilius Glabrio, who divided his army into four bodies, and directed his attacks upon four points at once; one body being stationed on the river Asopus, where was the gymnasium; the second near the citadel outside of the walls (extra muros), which was almost more thickly inhabited than the city itself; the third towards the Maliac Gulf; and the fourth on the river Melas, opposite the temple of Diana.

[22] William Martin Leake, who visited the site in the early 19th century, remarks that it seems quite clear from this account of Livy that the city occupied the low ground between the rivers Karvunariá (Asopus) and Mavra-Néria (Melas), extending from the one to the other, as well as a considerable distance into the plain in a south-eastern direction.