Caulonia was identified  from P. Orsi with today’s site of Monasterace Marina, was founded between the second half of the VII century B.C. and the beginning of the VI century.  It’s foundation remains one of the main obscurities of all of the ancient history of the Magna Grecia;

The literary origins are in fact scarce, fragmentary, and often are divergent.  Between them for study convenience we can distinguish those that are put in a mythical horizon and those that deal with its reality history.  In  a singular manner the mythical tradition associated the origins of Caulonia to the heroic age of the Trojan war, dating back the foundation to the Celt amazon.  The main origin was founded by Licofrone in Alessandra, where we learn that Cleta was Pentesilea’s foster-mother and finding out about his lady’s death in front of  Troy by Achille, he sailed to his search; but from a storm was conducted in Italy where he founded Cleta, and then all the following queens would be called Clete.  The last of the queens was killed by the Crotoniati many generations after.  The son of the last amazon, Caulon, founded the city of Caulonia, calling it like his own name.

With regards to the historic colonization of Caulonia and the origin of it founders, we have two font groups:  on one hand Strabone and Pausania, that indicate l’ecista in Tifone di Egio, they define it as a colony of Achei; on the other hand, the Pseudo-Scimmo, Solino and Stefano of  Bisanzio that consider it the colony of Crotone.

The traditional literary diverged, on the nature of its foundation: a subcolony or autonomy foundation instead?  Therefore it was debated if Caulonia came from a settlement of colonies coming directly from Peloponneso or if it was soon afterwards founded as a subcolony of Crotone.  Most of the studious decided to overcome the apparent contradiction between the two font groups pointing out that the Crotoniati, in founding the subcolony, could have made l’ecista da Aegium come from the motherland.

The most ancient history event that regards Caulonia is the battle between Crotone and Locri that took place in the second half of the VI century B.C. near the river Sagra  like Strabone said  ran between  Locri and ancient Caulonia.  Although not mentioned in the history fonts in relation to this war, Caulonia was surely involved in such a combat that the sight of the decisive battle in which, listening to Trogo-Giustino’s story, Crotone was badly defeated meanwhile the Locresi had a prodigious victory for the small number against the great number of the crotoniate.  After such a battle, around 530 B.C., they started the cauloniati issues in which a mythic character constantly appears, that was not possible to identify:  a virile character, naked, turned to the right, and with his right arm grasping a twig; on his left arm proteso in avanti è una figurina che corre, con i calzari alati.

Even Caulonia, like other Italiot cities was the places of pythagorean eteria like we get from the Pythagoreans list kept in Giamblico; staying to what Porfirio tells, Pitagora himself, who ran away from Crotone after the violent rebellion against the Pythagoreans at the end of the VI century and the beginning of the V century B.C., found shelter in Locri approaching first near the harbour of Caulonia.  Furthermore some magical  and extraordinary aspects bind Pitagora to the Cauloniate territory:  Giamblico says that when somebody asked for a prodigy like a sign of his exceptional powers, a white polar bear appeared in Caulonia; the historian Apollonio Discolo writes that Pitagora had killed a poisonous snake in the city. 

News on Caulonia was given in time of the expedition of Athens in Sicily between 415 and 412 B.C.: the small city had to manifest a neutral position towards Sparta and Athens, showing thou a greater propensity filoateniese.  Tucidide refers to in fact of the destruction from the Siracusani, in the territory of  Caulonia, of the great piles of wood, that was needed for the repairs or the construction of ships and that was destined to the Athens.

Around the second half of the V century B.C. Caulonia was part of Taranto and Metaponto of that arbitral wisdom against the exiled Pythagoreans from Crotone who were preparing to re-enter Crotone with weapons in consequence of the outburst of a new and violent rebellion of people in the city. Caulonia still formed, together with Crotone and Sibari, the so called achea league; a league that first limited only three achee cities, it then expanded in 393 B.C. in the Italiote league, extended also to other magno-greche cities, with the purpose to contrast the advance of the Lucani and the expansionistic of the Siracusano tyrant Dionisio I.

In 389 B.C. Caulonia was attacked and destroyed by Dionisio I, that inspired to unify the Magna Grecia under its own domination, and his population was transferred inevitably in Siracuse.  Caulonia had to undergo a difficult blow and the thing that you most notice in the documentation is the discontinuance of its monetary activity.

Later the city revived again when it was built by Dionisio II which against the bellicose interest of his father, had intentions to establish a reconciliation and cooperation politics with the Italiot cities.  Diodoro refers that the young Dionisio, when Siracuse was freed by Dione in 357 B.C. stayed with a fleet of eighty ships in Caulonia. Furthermore, the discovery archaeological of big and rich houses of the Hellenistic age in the village permitted to confirm the supposition that Caulonia, in the IV century, had to be reborn as a free and flourishing city.  Like many other Italiot cities, even Caulonia was occupied by the Brettii and during the war between the Tarantini and the Romans of the 280 B.C., the city was destroyed from an army of  Campani that were placed there by the Romans to guard Reggio, commanded by Decio Vibellio.  Caulonia had to rise, for the second time, like Polibio testifies that in the page of the X book dedicated to the Res Italiae, mentions that Caulonia together with Crotone is in the Greek cities of Italy.

Plutarco says that in 209 the Roman consul Fabio Massimo, while he was conquering Taranto lost by the Romans, trying to keep Annibale from the region, he gave orders to the troops to defend Reggio and to take Caulonia by force.  Livio confirms the news and adds that Annibale helped him by surrounding and obligating them to surrender.

Being destroyed by the Annibalica war and returning to the Romans, Caulonia had to give up its autonomy in politics.  Already at the beginning of the I century B.C. Caulonia probably didn’t exist seeing that Strabone defines it uninhabited and Plinio affirms that in that era only the ruins are seen.