According to some writers, Petilias would have been an ancient capital city of the confederate tribes of the Lucanis, situated on the vertex of the Stella Mountain in the Cilento and that should not be confused with the though ancient city of Petelia in the Bruzio.

Ancient capital city of the confederate tribes of the Lucanis, hardly identifiable with Petilia in the Bruzio; already the baron Antonini in halves the XVIII sec. interpreting a text of Strabone and another of Plutarco, proposes to identify it with the emergent rests on the vertex of the Stella Mountain founded by the Lucanis, immediately after the occupation of Posidonia.

Always according to Antonini the city was of small dimensions but impregnable, for the fortifications and the particular site and famous for a school of gladiators. Finally, founding himself on how much brought by Plutarco, the historian believes that Spartaco, fugitive from Reggio and defeated by M. Licinio Crasso in the lucan swamp, posts, according to him, not away from Paestum, is sheltered in proximity of our Petilia, on the hills of Laureana and Vatolla escaping so to the capture. In his works Antonini affirms to have studied different registrations containing references to the ancient city: an ancient registration found again near Casalvelino in honor of Pomanio Scorrano of Petilia,another was guarded in a belonging villa to the adviser Biagio Altomare to the Arenella in Naples and devoted to Lucio Varilio Sanna from the citizen of Petilia and a bystander had finally shown him from a carmelitan father in a church near the Stella Mountain in which it was legible: T...RABIR...MUR...REPAR...HIM...IMPE...The...Or...PETIL...LUCAN...L...D..

According to Ventimiglia, that the Volpi quotes with admiration, on the peaks of the Stella Mountain were recognized, «here and there, leftovers of ancient factories and broken of wrecks: in the tallest, in the South, there is a turn of boundaries representatives without doubt a notable and well provided city: in the other, in distance of around 2 km., the leftovers of a castle are also observed to defense of the city... ».

The archaeological recognition performed in the site in 1945 allowed to individualize the ruins of a citadel that, according to some, is referred to Petilia, capital of the confederate tribes of the Lucanis that called first Lucania and then Cilento; according to others, it was instead the principal center of the gastaldato of Lucania said then Cilento.An archaeological recognition performed in the site in 1945 allowed to individualize the ruins of a citadel that, according to some, referred to Petilia, unfortunately the plant of a base soldier has upset irreversibly subsequently the vertex of the mountain jeopardizing every future investigation of the site.