Taras (Taranto), Rhegion (Reggio Calabria), or Kroton (Crotone). The first Greek city to be absorbed into the Roman Republic was Neapolis in 327 BC. The other Greek cities in Italy followed during the Samnite Wars and the Pyrrhic War; Taras was the last to fall in 272. Sicily was conquered by Rome during the First Punic War. Only Syracuse remained independent until 212 because its king Hiero II was a devoted ally of the Romans. His grandson Hieronymus however made an alliance with Hannibal, which prompted the Romans to besiege the city, which fell in 212 despite the machines of Archimedes, described by Proclus in his commentary on Euclid's Elements. Archimedes constructed weapons powered by compressed air, weights and counterweights, according to Ctesibius and Hero. List of Hellenic Poleis in Italy This is a list of the 22 poleis (city states) in Italy, according to Mogens Herman Hansen. It does not list all the Hellenic settlements, only those organised around a polis structure. List of Hellenic Poleis in Sicily This is a list of the 46 poleis (city states) in Sicily, according to Mogens Herman Hansen. It does not list all the Hellenic settlements, only those organised around a polis structure. Middle Ages During the Early Middle Ages, following the disastrous Gothic War, new waves of Byzantine Christian Greeks fleeing the Slavic invasion of Peloponnese settled in Calabria, further strengthened the Hellenic element in the region. The iconoclast emperor Leo III appropriated lands that had been granted to the Papacy in southern Italy and the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire continued to govern the area in the form of the Catapanate of Italy (965 -1071) through the Middle Ages, well after northern Italy fell to the Lombards. At the time of the Normans' late medieval conquest of southern Italy and Sicily (in the late 12th century), the Salento peninsula (the "heel" of Italy), up to one-third of Sicily (concentrated in the Val Demone), and much of Calabria and Lucania were still largely Greek-speaking. Some regions of southern Italy experienced demographic shifts as Greeks began to migrate northwards in significant numbers from regions further south; one such region was Cilento, which came to have a Greek-speaking majority. At this time the language had evolved into medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, and its speakers were known as Byzantine Greeks. The resultant fusion of local Byzantine Greek culture with Norman and Arab