 Cicero nevertheless speaks of it, in his defence of the poet Aulus Licinius Archias (who had been adopted as a citizen of Heraclea), as still a flourishing and important town, and it appears to have been one of the few Greek cities in the south of Italy that still preserved their consideration under the Roman dominion.Its name is unaccountably omitted by the 2nd century AD geographer Ptolemy; but its existence at a much later period is attested by the Antonine Itinerary and the Tabula Peutingeriana.It was still a place of some importance under the empire; a branch road from Venusia joined the coast road at Heraclea.