Editing Lipari (section)

===Greek and Roman periods===

Greek colonists from [[Knidos]] arrived at Lipara ~580 BC after their first colonization attempt in Sicily failed and their leader, Pentathlos, was killed.<ref>Diodorus Siculus 5.9, Pausanias 10.11.3-4</ref> They settled on the site of the village now known as Castello in [[Magna Graecia]]. The colony successfully fought the [[Etruscan civilization|Etruscans]] for control of the [[Tyrrhenian Sea]].

The town was initially concentrated upon the summit of the rock which played the role of acropolis, seat of religious cults and of public life, but in the course of the first century of its existence, an increase in the population necessitated an expansion into the area at the foot of the rocky slopes and on to the top of the Civita hill. A first city wall, built sometime in the 5th century BC was erected along outcrops at the bottom of the slopes of the rock, leaving outside the modern district of Diana, which was destined from the beginning to accommodate the city necropolis. A second city wall was built in the 4th century BC to enclose the new residential area bounded to the north and south by the river-beds of Santa Lucia and Ponte, which in ancient times ran into the two bays at the foot of the rock. The city wall ran near the two river-beds and then joined on to the Acropolis and the Civita hill. The mighty fortification, of which some traces are visible today in the district of Diana, divided the town from the necropolis.

[[Ancient Carthage|Carthaginian]] forces succeeded in holding the site briefly during their struggles with [[Dionysios of Syracuse|Dionysios I, tyrant of Syracuse]] in 394 BC, but once they were gone the ''polis'' entered a three-way alliance which included Dionysios' new colony at [[Tyndaris]]. Lipara prospered, but in 304 BC [[Agathocles of Syracuse|Agathokles]] took the town by treachery and is said to have lost all of his pillage from it in a storm at sea.

Lipara became a Carthaginian naval base during the first [[Punic War]], but fell to Roman forces in 252&ndash;251 BC. It was occupied by [[Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa|Agrippa]] in [[Augustus|Octavian]]'s [[Bellum Siculum|campaign]] against [[Sextus Pompeius]]. Under the [[Roman Empire]] it was a place of retreat and exile and was enjoyed because of its thermal baths using natural springs. The Emperor [[Caracalla]] sent his wife, [[Fulvia Plautilla]], and her brother, Plautius, into exile here for the rest of their lives.

Many objects recovered from old wrecks are now in the Aeolian Museum of Lipari.