Drepana
Template:About Template:Infobox Italian comune
Drepana (Template:Langx) was an Elymian, Carthaginian, and Roman port in antiquity on the western coast of Sicily. It was the site of a crushing Roman defeat by the Carthaginians in 249Template:NbspBC. It eventually developed into the modern Italian city of Trapani.
NameEdit
Drepana received its name from drépanon ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}), the Greek word for "sickle", because of the curving shape of its harbour.<ref name="Smith">Template:Cite book</ref> This was Latinized as Drepanum before being pluralized to its present form.
HistoryEdit
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The town was founded by the Elymians to serve as the port of the nearby city of Eryx (present-day Erice), which overlooks it from Monte Erice. The city sits on a low-lying promontory jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea. The town, Template:Cvt north of Lilybaeum, had been fortified by the Carthaginians, who resettled part of the population to Eryx. In 241, it was besieged by G. Lutatius Catulus,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and later used as a naval base.
The town features in the Aeneid as the site of the death and funeral games of Anchises.<ref name=Smith />
Carthage seized control of the city in 260Template:NbspBC, subsequently making it an important naval base. The naval battle of Drepanum took place in 249Template:NbspBC and was a major victory for Carthage against the Roman Republic in the First Punic War. After the Battle of the Aegates and Carthage's loss of the war, the town was ceded to Roman control in 241Template:NbspBC.
It never achieved the status of a civitas in Roman times.
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
Template:Archaeological sites in Sicily Template:Phoenician cities and colonies Template:Authority control