Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Velia

or Elea (Ἐλέα), also called Hyĕlé (Ὑέλη). Now Castellamare; a Greek town of Lucania, on the western coast between Paestum and Buxentum, was founded by the Phocaeans, who had abandoned their native city to escape from the Persian sovereignty, about B.C. 543. It was situated about three miles east of the river Hales, and possessed a good harbour. It is celebrated as the birthplace of the philosophers Parmenides and Zeno, who founded a school of philosophy usually known under the name of the Eleatic. (See Philosophia.) The different forms of the name of the town arise from the fact that the Romans preserve the original Aeolic digamma, representing it by their semi-consonantal V.