LOCRI, an ancient city of Magna Graecia, Italy. The original inhabitants were, it has recently been ascertained, of Sicilian race (MacIver, Iron Age, 210). They occupied the Zephyrian promon tory (Capo Bruzzano some 12 m. N. of Capo Spartivento), and though after three or four years they moved 12 m. north, still near the coast, 2 m. south of Gerace Marina below the modern Gerace, they still retained the name of Locri Epizephyrii, AoKpol of to distinguish them from the Ozolian and Opuntian Locri of Greece itself. The foundation of Locri goes back to about 683 B.C. It was the first Greek community to have a written code of laws given by Zaleucus in 664 B.C. From Locri were founded the colonies of Meisma and Hipponium. It repelled the attacks of Croton and found support in Syracuse against Rhegium : it was thus an active adversary of Athenian aggrandisement. Pindar extolls it in the loth and 11th Olympian Odes. Stesichorus (q.v.) was indeed of Locrian origin. Dionysius I. of Syracuse selected his wife from Locri : its territory was then increased, and the circuit of its walls was doubled, but it lost its freedom. In 356 B.c. it was ruled by Dionysius II. From the battle of Heraclea to the year 205 (when it was captured by P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus Maior, and placed under the control of his legate Q. Pleminius), Locri was continually changing allegiance between Rome and her ene mies ; but it remained an ally. In later Roman times it was of no great importance. It was destroyed by the Saracens in 915.
Excavations in 1889-90 discovered an Ionic temple (the Doric style being usual in Magna Graecia) at the north-west angle of the town—originally a cella with two naves, a closed pronaos on the east and an adytum at the west, later converted into a hexastyle peripteral temple with 34 painted terra-cotta columns. This was
destroyed about 400 B.C. and a new temple built on the ruins, heptastyle peripteral, with no intermediate columns in the cella and opisthodomos, and with 44 columns in all. The figures from the pediment of the twin Dioscuri, who according to the legend assisted Locri against Crotona, are in the Naples museum. The environs yielded many archaic terra-cottas, and large trenches, covered with tiles, contained some 14,000 scyphoi arranged in rows. A Doric temple was also cleared under the house called Casa Marafioti: the fine equestrian group in terra cotta from the western gable is, with other objects from Locri, in the museum at Syracuse. There was also a sanctuary of Persephone from which came numerous votive tablets of the 5th century B.C. Much work has also been done in cemeteries, most of the tombs belonging to the 5th and 4th centuries, though the earliest are pre-Hellenic (9th-7th centuries.) The city walls, the length of which was nearly 5 m., consisted of three parts—the fortified castles (ckpot5pa) with large towers, on three different hills, the city proper, and the lower town—the latter enclosed by long walls running down to the sea. Under Rome, the city was restricted to the plain near the sea.
Prehistoric objects confirm the accounts of Thucydides and Polybius that the Greek settlers were preceded by Siculi.
See Orsi in Notizie degli Scavi, 1901-1917. (T. A.) LOOSE: seeLEvoCA.