Herculis Promontorium
τὸ Ἡράκλειον
Herculis Promontorium (τὸ Ἡράκλειον, Strab. vi. p.259), a promontory of Bruttium, which is regarded by Strabo as the extreme S. point of that country, and consequently of all Italy. It is now called Cape Spartivento, and is, in fact, the SE. point of the great headland forming the extremity of Bruttium, as Cape Leucopetra (Capo dell' Armi) is the SW. Hence, Strabo is perfectly correct in saying that, immediately after doubling the Herculean Promontory, the. course of a voyager would lie to the NE. It is, however, in just the same latitude as Leucopetra, which was more commonly regarded by the ancients as the extreme point of the Italian peninsula.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.