[1] Its main town was also called Trachis until 426 BC, when it was refounded as a Spartan colony and became Heraclea Trachinia.
During the Greco-Persian wars, the fertile plains of Heraclea saw the landing and encampment of the Persian army as they marched to Thermopylae.
After a bloody defeat at the hands of the neighbouring mountaineers in 409, the Spartan governor quarrelled with the native settlers, whom he expelled in 399.
Four years later Thebes used her new predominance in central Greece to restore the Trachinians, who retained Heraclea until 371, when the Thessalonian ruler Jason of Pherae seized and dismantled it.
Recent excavations have also revealed a series of small tombs at the foothills of Oeta near the banks of the Asopus river.