HERACLEA, or Heracleia (in French, Héraclée), the name of several ancient cities in various parts of the area of Greek colonization, so called in honour of Heracles or Hercules.
I. Heraclea, a city of Magna Graseia, which lay between the rivers Aciris and Siris, not far from the shores of the Gulf of Tarentum, near the site of the modern village of Policoro. It appears to have been a joint colony of the Tarentines and the Thurians, and to have risen after the destruction of the neighbouring city of Siris. That it attained to no small prosperity and became the seat of the great politico-religious assembly of the Italian Greeks is nearly all that can be said of its earlier history. By Alexander of Epirus it was deprived of this privilege in favour of Thurii. Pyrrhus was victorious in its vicinity in the first battle he fought with the Romans, 280 b.c., and two years later the city formed an alliance on advantageous terms with the conquerors. In the time of Cicero it was still comparatively prosperous. The Tabidce Heradeenses, found at Luce near the ruins of the city in 1753, are two bronze tablets, or rather fragments of tablets, containing on one surface a Greek inscription relating to temple domains and on the other surface a copy of the famous Lex Julia Municipals published by Julius Ceesar in 45 b.c. They are preserved in the Museo Nazionale at Naples, and one of them is distinguished as the jEs Britannicum and the other as the ^Es Neapolitanum. Both inscriptions are given in Mazzocchi, Commentaria in Regii Herculanensis Musei aeneas tabulas Ileradeenses (Naples, 1754-55), and the Latin one will be found in Muratori, Inscrifitiones (vol. ii.), and Haubold, Monumenla legalia. See also Savigny, Zeitschriftfiir geschicht. Rechtswiss. (vol. ix.) and Vermischle Schriften (vol. iii., Berlin, 1850).
II. Heraclea, a city of Sicily, at the mouth of the Halycus (the modern Platani), not far from the promontory now known as Capo Bianco. It was distinguished from the other Heracleas by the surname of Minoa, which was explained as referring to its foundation by Minos of Crete. Its name frequently occurs in connexion with the Cartha ginian occupation of Sicily, and it was in the neighbouring sea that the Carthaginian fleet was routed by Regulus and Manlius in 256 b.c. The Romans introduced a colony.
III. Heraclea Pontica, a city on the coast of Phrygia in Asia Minor, easily identified with the modern Bender Eregli or Erekli, at the mouth of the Kilidj-su on the Black Sea. It was founded by a Megarian colony, which soon subjugated the native tribe of the Mariandynians, and extended its power over a considerable territory. The prosperity of the city, rudely shaken by the Galatians and the Bithynians, was utterly destroyed by Aurelius Cotta in the Mithridatic war. It was the birthplace of Heraclides Ponticus. The modern town is best known for its coal mines, from which Constantinople receives a good part of its supply. See Polsberw, De Rebus Heradece, Branden burg, 1833; and O. Kainmel, Heradeotica: Beitrdge zur alien GescJi. der griedi. Colonisation im nordl. Klein-Asien (Progr. des Gymn. zu Plauen, 1869).
IV. Heraclea Sintica, a town in Thracian Macedonia, to the south of the Stryinon, the site of which is marked by the village of Zsrv6khori, and identified by the frequent discovery of local coins.
V. Heraclea, a town on the borders of Caria and Ionia, near the foot of Mount Latmus, whence it is usually distinguished as the Latmian. In its neighbourhood was the burial cave of Endymion. See Eayet and Thomas, Mild et le Golfe Latmique, Paris, 1877.
Heraclea was also the name of one of the Sporades, between Naxos and los, which is still called Raklia, and bears traces of a Greek township with temples to Tyche and Zeus Lophites. See Baumeister in Philologus, vol. ix.
HERACLEON, a Gnostic who flourished about 125 a.d., probably in the south of Italy or in Sicily, is generally classed by the early heresiologists with the Valentinian school of heresy. In his system he appears to have regarded the divine nature as a vast abyss in whose pleroma were aeons of different orders and degrees, emanations from the source of being. Midway between the supreme God and the material world was Demiurgus, who created the latter, and under whose jurisdiction the lower, animal soul of man proceeded after death, while his higher, celestial soul returned to the pleroma whence at first it issued. Heracleon seems to have received the ordinary Christian Scriptures ; and Origen has preserved fragments of a commentary by him on St John s gospel, while Clement of Alexandria quotes from him what appears to to be a passage from a commentary on St Luke s gospel. These writings are remarkable for their intensely mystical and allegorical interpretations of the text. The portions of the commentary on St John s gospel have been brought together by Grabe in the second volume of his Spicilegium.
HERACLES. See Hercules.
HERACLIDES, surnamed Ponticus, a Greek miscellaneous writer who flourished in the 4th century b.c., was born at Heraclea in Pontus. Removing to Athens, he is said to have been a disciple successively of Speusippus,. Plato, and Aristotle. According to Suidas, the second of these philosophers, on departing for Sicily, left his scholars in the charge of Heraclides. The latter part of his life was spent at Heraclea. Of his private history we have few authentic details. He is said to have been vain and fat and to have maintained such state in Athens that the wits changed his surname into Pompicus, or the Showy. Various idle stories are related about him. On one occasion, for instance, Heraclea was afflicted with famine, and the Pythoness at Delphi, bribed by Heraclides, assured his inquiring townsmen that the dearth would be stayed if they granted a golden crown to that philosopher. This was done ; but just as Heraclides was receiving his honour in a crowded assembly, he was seized with apoplexy, while the dishonest priestess perished at the same moment from the bite of a serpent. On his death-bed he is said to have requested a friend to hide his body as soon as life was extinct, and, by putting a serpent in its place, induce his townsmen to suppose that he had been carried up to heaven. The trick was discovered, and Heraclides received only ridicule instead of divine honours.
He wrote on a great variety of subjects, but only one fragment, On Statecraft, is now extant. This was published with the Varia Historia of ..Elian at Rome in 1545 ; but the besf editions are those of Roller (Halle, 1804), Coray (Paris, 1805), and Miiller. See Fr. W. Schmidt, De Hcraclidcc Pontici et Dicccarchi Mcsscnii dialogic deperditis, Breslau, 1867.
HERACLITUS of Ephesus, one of the most subtle and profound of the metaphysicians of ancient Greece, has only of late years had his true position assigned to him in the history of philosophy. To this the obscure and epigrammatic character of his style and the fragmentary condition of his works have in the main contributed, together with the fact that not only his immediate disciples but also his critics, including even Plato, have systematically laid stress upon those features of his doctrines which are least indicative of his real point of view. The true position of Heraclitus is that of the founder of an independent metaphysical system, which sought to get rid of the difficulty, so prominent in the Eleatic philosophy, of overcoming the contradiction between the one and the phenomenal many, by enunciating, as the principle of the universe, "Becoming," implying, as it does, that everything is and at the same time, and in the same relation, is not.
