TURIO. - Ancient city of Magna Graecia in the Gulf of Taranto, founded by the survivors of Sybaris, a short distance from the ancient and opulent city.
Pliny places it "inter duos amnes Crathim et Sybarim," while the Antonine Itinerary records it at 12 miles from Rossano. Both Pliny and Ptolemy remember it as a maritime city; therefore in all likelihood it was located at a place called "Le Muraglie," near the present station of T., between Corigliano and Terranova di Sibari, which would be its heir. It grew considerably, to the point of emulating the city of its origin; but the wars of Pyrrhus and of Hannibal with the Romans determined its decline. In 282 B.C. it had a Roman garrison and became a "civitas foederata"; in 194 B.C. a Latin colony of 3000 persons was settled in the territory of Thurii under the name of Copia Thurii, which cannot in any way be identified with S. Marco Argentano, in the Crati Valley. From the Social War onward it was a Roman municipium.
It may reasonably be held that T. received the Gospel from the earliest times. However, it is not proven that the popes St. Telesphorus and St. Dionysius were natives of it. The hierarchy appears there from the end of the 5th century; but its existence from Constantinian times may be regarded as established. The bishop John took part in the Roman Synod of 504, and Lanzoni, together with others, thinks that he could be the recipient of certain letters of Pope Gelasius (492-96), for example, that of 13 April 496. In the Register of St. Gregory the Great T. is mentioned several times. At the Synod of Pope Agatho in 679 the bishop Theophanes took part. He is the last prelate of T. that history records. After him nothing more is known of it. It seems that around the middle of the 8th century T. was destroyed by Lombard incursions, since at that time, in place of T., the two dioceses of Rossano and Cassano appear in Byzantine sources; to the former went the territory south of the Crati; the rest to the latter.
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Francesco Russo