Rhegium

or Regium, Rhegion (Reggio di Calabria)

A city in Bruttii (now Calabria) on the toe of the Italian peninsula, bordering the Sicilian (Messina) Strait. Situated in an area named Pallantion, on a sloping plateau that extended between two ridges and overlooked a harbor near the mouth of the river Apsias (Calopinace), Rhegium was founded in the later eighth century BC, and may have been the first Greek colony in the far south of Italy. The information regarding its settlement, however, is conflicting. According to the historian Antiochus of Syracuse, the people of Zancle (Messana, now Messina) sent for colonists from Chalcis in Euboea, and appointed Antimnestus as their leader (oikistes). Alternatively, however—or in addition—a part was played in the foundation by Messenians (from the southwestern Peloponnese), who were refugees from their first war with Sparta (c 743–720?). The geographical position of the city facilitated its commercial relations with the Greek colonies in Sicily, and it possessed vines and fisheries.

In the sixth century Rhegium was the birthplace of the lyric poet Ibycus and center of a confraternity based on the teachings of Pythagoras. After a period of government by an oligarchic regime borrowing its laws from Charondas of Catana (Catania)—who probably lived in the same period—followed by the settlement of additional colonists c 540 by Phocaeans from Ionia in western Asia Minor (who subsequently colonized Elea [Velia] from Rhegium)—the city came under the autocratic rule of Anaxilas (494–476); seizing Zancle, he fortified the straits against Etruscan incursions, but supported the Carthaginians against Syracuse at the time of their defeat at Himera (Imera) in 480. The sons of Anaxilas were driven out of Rhegium in 461, and its new administration joined a refounded `Achaean League’. But the Syracusans, for their part, offered support to Locri Epizephyrii, the rival of Rhegium, which Dionysius I destroyed in 387/6, dismantling the walls and building a palace.

Reconstructed under the name of Phoebia (358) and liberated from Dionysius II, the city allied itself with his successor Timoleon (d. 334). Later it fell temporarily into the hands of the Mamertini (280), Campanian mercenaries who had seized Messana; but it successfully resisted native Bruttians, and after requesting and receiving a Roman garrison (282) resisted the invading army of King Pyrrhus of Epirus (276). During the Second Punic War Rhegium again stood firm against the Carthaginians under Hannibal, apparently providing the mint at which Rome's earliest silver denarii were struck (c 211). In 132/131 it was linked by a road (probably a Via Annia, named after Titus Annius Rufus) to Rome, and like other Italian cities was granted the rank of municipium in c 89. In 36 it received a settlement of marines, adopting the name of Regium Julium, and continued to prosper throughout the imperial epoch.

The acropolis was probably on the higher part of the site occupied by the modern town, whereas the agora corresponds with what is now the Piazza Italia. A large, early, sacred precinct has been identified to its northeast, and inscriptions bear witness to a temple of Apollo and another shrine dedicated to Isis and Serapis. A sanctuary of Artemis, mentioned by Thucydides, has been located outside the walls toward the sea. There is now reason to believe that a category of black-figure vases of the later sixth century BC, hitherto known as `Chalcidic,’ may have been products of Rhegium. The museum at Reggio di Calabria contains the Riace Bronzes, two superb male statues of fifth-century date recently found in the sea some miles to the north.