The History of Tempsa
Tempsa is the Latin name of the ancient city of Temesa, a city of ancient Italy of the Ausones, conquered by the Brettii and the Greeks, then a Roman colony, located on the Tyrrhenian coast.
According to Strabo, Temesa was first inhabited by the Ausones and then by the Aetolians of Thoas, while Solinus attributes its founding to the Ionians. Strabo, who also speaks of the existence of a heroon of Polites, one of Ulysses’ companions, places it in Calabria just north of Terina.
In the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, Temesa was conquered by the Italic population of the Brettii. Hannibal destroyed the nearby Terina around 203 BC and left Temesa intact, which subsequently became a Roman colony in 194 BC under the name Tempsa.
In the 8th century, it was still a diocesan seat.
The Tabula Peutingeriana marks this locality (Temsa) 14 Roman miles north of the Tanno River, identified with the Savuto, but the site, once proposed by some as Piano della Tirrena (a high flat hill overlooking the sea at the confluence of the Savuto with the Grande stream in the municipality of Nocera Terinese), in light of the latest findings, does not appear convincing. The most correct hypothesis could be the site located between the modern territories of Campora San Giovanni, Serra d’Aiello, Cleto, and Nocera Terinese.
According to Manfredi-Gigliotti, the problem concerning the exact identification of the city (Temesa Brettia or Tamasso Cypriot?) was generated by the erroneous translation of the literary place of Strabo where it is written about Temesa (Geography VI, 1, 5) as follows: “kai deiknutai calkourgeia plhsion, a nun ekleleiptai”. The phrase has generally been translated: “And, indeed, in the vicinity (of Temesa) there were copper mines, now abandoned”. The translation error refers to the Greek term calkourgeia which has been translated as “copper mines”, while it is evident that its semantics come from calkos (copper) and ergomai (to work): not copper mines, but workshops for working copper. Even today, in the immediate vicinity of the Temesa site, there is a district called le Mattonate which clearly evokes the presence of metallurgical furnaces (also attested in medieval times);
Finally, the circumstance that removes any doubt about the identification of the city is represented by the statement of Homer (Odyssey, I, 180-184), where it can be read that, going to Temesa, one goes to a people who speak another language ἐπ’ἀλλοθρόους ἀνθρώπους, otherness understood, obviously, with reference to the Greek language. In Cyprus, the language spoken was that of Homer.
Source: Wikipedia
