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Modern Description: Heraclea Sintica was an Ancient Thracian, Greek, and Roman city located near the town of Petrich in Southwest Bulgaria. It was the center of the ancient region of Sintica along the Strymon/Struma River, which was inhabited by the Thracian tribe of the Sintians. It was founded around 300 BC by Cassander, ruler of Macedon (r. 305-297 BC), who also founded Thessaloniki. In 2002, Bulgarian archaeologists managed to identify the city for sure after they found a Latin inscription dated back to 308 AD, in which Roman Emperor Galerius (r. 293-305 AD as Caesar, 305-311 AD as Augustus) addressed the local urban citizens of Heraclea Sintica responding to a plea to restore their lost civil rights. Heraclea Sintica had a civic basilica (found in 2016) which is 22 meters long and 16 meters wide, and parts of its walls have been preserved up to a height of 5 meters. Its ruins are located right near the ruins of a similar public building which is some 700 years older (dating back to the 4th century BC, i.e. the early Hellenistic period), and was discovered in 2015. In Late Antiquity, the city of Heraclea Sintica gradually was replaced as a regional center by the nearby city of Parthicopolis founded by the Romans in the 2nd century AD (today’s town of Sandanski, previously known as Sveti Vrach). In recent years, Heraclea Sintica has been excavated by Ass. Prof. Lyudmil Vagalinski, Director of Bulgaria’s National Institute and Museum of Archaeology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Sotir Ivanov, Director of the Petrich Museum of History. (http://archaeologyinbulgaria.com/2017/11/05/archaeologists-find-shrines-ancient-heraclea-sintica-southwest-bulgaria-evidence-row-roman-city-parthicopolis/)
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclea_Sintica
Wikidata ID: Q1607763
Trismegistos Geo: 12145

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