Strabo Geography 6.3.1

[1] Now that I have traversed the regions of Old Italy ¹ as far as Metapontium, I must speak of those that border on them. And Iapygia borders on them. The Greeks call it Messapia, also, but the natives, dividing it into two parts, call one part (that about the Iapygian Cape) ² the country of the Salentini, and the other the country of the Calabri. Above these latter, on the north, are the Peucetii and also those people who in the Greek language are called Daunii, but the natives give the name Apulia to the whole country that comes after that of the Calabri, though some of them, particularly the Peucetii, are called Poedicli also. Messapia forms a sort of peninsula, since it is enclosed by the isthmus that extends from Brentesium ³ as far as Taras, three hundred and ten stadia. And the voyage thither ⁴ around the Iapygian Cape is, all told, about four hundred ⁵ stadia. The distance from Metapontium ⁶ is about two hundred and twenty stadia, and the voyage to it is towards the rising sun. But though the whole Tarantine Gulf, generally speaking, is harborless, yet at the city there is a very large and beautiful harbor, ⁷ which is enclosed by a large bridge and is one hundred stadia in circumference. In that part of the harbor which lies towards the innermost recess, ⁸ the harbor, with the outer sea, forms an isthmus, and therefore the city is situated on a peninsula; and since the neck of land is low-lying, the ships are easily hauled overland from either side. The ground of the city, too, is low-lying, but still it is slightly elevated where the acropolis is. The old wall has a large circuit, but at the present time the greater part of the city—the part that is near the isthmus—has been forsaken, but the part that is near the mouth of the harbor, where the acropolis is, still endures and makes up a city of noteworthy size. And it has a very beautiful gymnasium, and also a spacious market-place, in which is situated the bronze colossus of Zeus, the largest in the world except the one that belongs to the Rhodians. Between the marketplace and the mouth of the harbor is the acropolis, which has but few remnants of the dedicated objects that in early times adorned it, for most of them were either destroyed by the Carthaginians when they took the city or carried off as booty by the Romans when they took the place by storm. ⁹ Among this booty is the Heracles in the Capitol, a colossal bronze statue, the work of Lysippus, dedicated by Maximus Fabius, who captured the city.