page_title: Paestum
section_title: Foundation
hierarchical_section_title: Paestum / History / Foundation
caption_attribution_description: English: Image from Le antichita di Pozzuoli, Baja, e Cuma, by Filippo Morghen (1730- c.1807), published in Napoli, 1769. Typ 725.69.580, Houghton Library, Harvard University
context_page_description: Paestum was a major ancient Greek city on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea in Magna Graecia. The ruins of Paestum are famous for their three ancient Greek temples in the Doric order, dating from about 550 to 450 BC, which are in a very good state of preservation. The city walls and amphitheatre are largely intact, and the bottom of the walls of many other structures remain, as well as paved roads. The site is open to the public, and there is a modern national museum within it, which also contains the finds from the associated Greek site of Foce del Sele.
  Solinus wrote that it was established by Dorians. After its foundation by Greek colonists under the name of Poseidonia it was eventually conquered by the local Lucanians and later the Romans. The Lucanians renamed it to Paistos and the Romans gave the city its current name. As Pesto or Paestum, the town became a bishopric, but it was abandoned in the Early Middle Ages, and left undisturbed and largely forgotten until the eighteenth century.
  Today the remains of the city are found in the modern frazione of Paestum, which is part of the comune of Capaccio Paestum in the Province of Salerno in the region of Campania, Italy.
context_section_description: According to Strabo, the city was founded as Poseidonia (named after the Greek deity of the sea) by Greek Achaeans from Sybaris. The colonists had built fortifications close to the sea, but then decided to found the city farther inland at a higher elevation. The fortifications might have been built to the south of Poseidonia on the promontory where Agropoli is now. According to the historical tradition the sanctuary to Poseidon was located there, after which the city would have been named. The date of Poseidonia's founding is not given by ancient sources, but the archaeological evidence gives a date of approximately 600 BC.
  Alternatively in fact, the Sybarites may have been Troezenians. Aristotle wrote that a group of Troezenians was expelled from Sybaris by the Achaeans after their joint founding of that city. Gaius Julius Solinus calls Paestum a Dorian colony and Strabo mentions that Troezen once was called Poseidonia. As a consequence it has been argued that Paestum was founded by the Troezenians referred to by Aristotle. Another hypothesis is that the Sybarites were aided by Dorians in their founding of Poseidonia.
caption: Overview of Paestum, 1769
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