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Greek city of Petelia in Bruttium
TIME OF SECOND PUNIC WAR
Bronze 19mm Struck circa 215-210 B.C.
Reference: HGC 1, 1614. HN Italy 2454. SNG Copenhagen 1910.
Veiled head of Demeter to right, wearing wreath of grain ears.
ΠΕΤΗΛΙΝΩΝ Zeus standing facing, head to right, hurling thunderbolt with his right hand and holding scepter in his left; to left, star; to right, H.
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Second Punic War
.jpg/305px-Hannibal_in_Italy_by_Jacopo_Ripanda_-_Sala_di_Annibale_-_Palazzo_dei_Conservatori_-_Musei_Capitolini_-_Rome_2016_(2).jpg) The Second Punic War (218 BC – 201 BC) is most remembered for the Carthaginian Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps. His army invaded Italy from the north and resoundingly defeated the Roman army in several battles, but never achieved the ultimate goal of causing a political break between Rome and its allies.
While fighting Hannibal in Italy, Hispania, and Sicily, Rome simultaneously fought against Macedon in the First Macedonian War. Eventually, the war was taken to Africa, where Carthage was defeated at the Battle of Zama (201 BC) by Scipio Africanus. The end of the war saw Carthage’s control reduced to only the city itself.
There were three military theaters in this war: Italy, where Hannibal defeated the Roman legions repeatedly; Hispania, where Hasdrubal, a younger brother of Hannibal, defended the Carthaginian colonial cities with mixed success until eventually retreating into Italy; and Sicily, where the Romans held military supremacy.
 In Greek mythology, Demeter was the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, the seasons (personified by the Hours), and the harvest. One of her surnames is Sito (σίτος: wheat) as the giver of food or corn. Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sanctity of marriage, the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that also predated the Olympian pantheon. Her Roman cognate is Ceres.
 In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the “Father of Gods and men” who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.
Zeus was the child of Cronus and Rhea, and the youngest of his siblings. In most traditions he was married to Hera, although, at the oracle of Dodona, his consort was Dione: according to the Iliad, he is the father of Aphrodite by Dione. He is known for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo and Artemis, Hermes, Persephone (by Demeter), Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses (by Mnemosyne); by Hera, he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus.
As Walter Burkert points out in his book, Greek Religion, “Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence.” For the Greeks, he was the King of the Gods, who oversaw the universe. As Pausanias observed, “That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men”. In Hesiod’s Theogony Zeus assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods.
His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical “cloud-gatherer” also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses: standing, striding forward, with a thunderbolt leveled in his raised right hand, or seated in majesty.
Petilia was a city name found in some ancient works of the classical antiquity. It’s widely accepted that in the antiquity there were two cities with this name, both located in Southern Italy. One of them, Petilia, was located in ancient Lucania (today’s Basilicata and Campania), while the second one, Petelia, was located on the coast of Bruttium (today’s Calabria).
Petelia (near Bruttium)
During the Second Punic War Petelia remained a Roman ally, while all of the other Bruttian cities had gone over to Hannibal. After a long siege, it was taken by the Carthaginians, its people expelled and replaced by other Bruttians; but following the Roman victory its original population was restored. Petelia’s remains might be located in today’s Petilia Policastro or Strongoli. The Petelia Gold Tablet was discovered near Strongoli in the nineteenth century.
Some historians claim that Ancient Petelia already was a bishopric, established perhaps in 546 or then adopting the city’s new medieval name Strongoli, but without solid evidence, and the see is never mentioned in the Byzantine imperial Notitia Episcopatuum of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which most dioceses in Calabria belonged to in the 9th till 11th centuries, so the diocese’s foundation may rather date from the Normans, probably late 12th century.
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