The earliest human presence in the area of Ascoli Satriano dates from around the 9th century BC, according to archaeological evidence, and similar dated earthworks are common in the area. which was the first of King
Pyrrhus of Epirus's
Pyrrhic victory against the
Roman Republic during the
Pyrrhic War. This was followed by the
Battle of Asculum (209 BC), during the
Second Punic War, in which
Hannibal defeated a Roman army commanded by
Marcus Claudius Marcellus in an indecisive battle.
Asculum was also the name of other places. The
Battle of Canusium also took place nearby. In the
Social War the city took the Italian side against Rome, and the end of that war, at the
Battle of Asculum (89 BC), the victorious Romans besieged the town, starved it to surrender, executed the adult male prisoners by flogging and decapitation, and burned the town. Those noncombatants who survived were left to wander without support. The Roman general responsible,
Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, gained the nickname
Carnifex ("Butcher"). Later
Sulla established a military colony there. In the Roman period it became a small cluster of habitations in a wider network of scattered villas. Under the
Roman Empire the economy was operated by slave labour and focused on grain cultivation. The
large luxurious villa at Faragola was typical of a
latifundium. As the
Western Roman Empire began to collapse in the fourth and fifth centuries, many of the surrounding farms were abandoned with a retraction of cultivation and a re-growth of woodlands. In the mid-9th century the
Saracens razed the city. In 1040 it rebelled against the
Byzantines and, the following year, a decisive battle was fought nearby which granted the
Normans control over southern
Italy. An
earthquake in 1456 totally destroyed Ascoli Satriano, and forced relocation of the surviving inhabitants to the site of the current town. Re-growth of the town however was interrupted by periodic outbreaks of
plague and
typhus into the early 19th Century. From the end of the nineteenth century the Ascoli Satriano was affected by increasing emigration to the Americas, reaching a peak between 1903 and 1914, stopping during the periods of the
First World War and
Italian fascism. After the
bombing of Foggia in 1943, Ascoli Satriano was freed by British and American forces. Ascoli Satriano was mentioned by the Irish writer
James Joyce in his novel
Ulysses. After the Second World War, Ascoli Satriano, close to Cerignola, was the center of significant labor struggles against
landlordism,
sharecropping and low wages, and strikes, demonstrations and land occupations became frequent. Trade unionists and politicians made passionate speeches to organize to support the demands of the working classes in Piazza Cecco d'Ascoli (today Piazza Giovanni Paolo II). == Main sights ==