Cerillae

• a small town on the sea-coast of Bruttium destroyed by Hannibal, now Cirella Vecchia, Sil. 8, 580.

CERILLAE or CERILLI (Κήριλλοι, Strab.; CERILLAESil. Ital.), a town of Bruttium, on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, a few miles S. of the river Laus. Silius Italicus tells us (l. c.) that it was laid waste by Hannibal during the Second Punic War, and probably never recovered, as its name is not found either in Pliny or Ptolemy, and is merely incidentally noticed by Strabo (6. p. 255) as a small place near Laus. It is also found under the slightly corrupted form Cerelis in the Tab. Peut., which places it 8 miles S. of the river Laus; and the name is still retained by the village of Cirella Vecchia, about 5 miles from that river. (Barr, de Sit. Calabr. p. 53; Romanelli, vol. 1. p. 23.) Strabo gives the distance from thence across the isthmus of the Bruttian peninsula to the nearest point of the Tarentine Gulf in the territory of Thurium, at 300 stadia, or 30 G. miles, which is almost precisely correct.