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Petelia
Strongoli
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Petelia, on its steep round hill at Strongoli above the Ionian coast, claimed Philoctetes, the archer of the Trojan War, as its founder. In the war against Hannibal the little town held out for Rome for eleven months until hunger forced it to surrender to the Carthaginians in 215 BC, a loyalty Roman writers praised again and again. The Byzantines later named the stronghold after the round shape of its hill, which gave today's Strongoli.