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The foundation of the sub-colony of Akragas originated in 581 BC, at first as a outpost of the Rhodio-Cretan colony of Gela founded at the beginning of the 7th century (689-688 BC). Akragas was founded by the two oikistes (colonial leaders) Aristonoo and Pistilo, traditionally seen to represent the dual provenance of settlers from Rhodes and Crete.
The city’s period of greatest splendour coincides with its first two centuries, which were marked by the rule of the tyrants Phalaris and Theron (6th to 5th century BC). Beyond bringing an enormous loot to Akragas, the historic victory of the Greeks over the Carthaginians at Himera (northern Sicily), in 480 BC, marked for the city a period of prosperity and power that brought about great public works, temples, and aqueducts. The court of Theron (tyrant of Akragas between 488 and 471 BC) was frequented by great poets such as Simonides and Pindar who would praise Akragas as being "the most beautiful of the cities of mortals; friend of opulence, home of Persephone”.
The time of the democracy (471-406 BC), which saw the rise of the authority and personality of Empedocles, brought about a renewal of building activity with the construction of the majority of the Akragas temples. A border conflict between Segesta and Selinunte provoked a second Carthaginian intervention in Sicily at the end of the 5th century (409 BC) and Akragas was directly attacked. After a long siege, it was taken by the Carthaginians in 406 and abandoned by the inhabitants who could return there in 405 BC under the condition that they would not fortify and pay a tribute to Carthage. With Timoleon (338-334 BC), a period of growth and prosperity returned for Akragas, when new settlers from Elea-Velia (Salerno region in southern Italy) were added to the previous population and the walls were rebuilt. During the Punic Wars, Akragas (together with Eraclea Minoa) became the base of Carthaginian operations against the Romans.
This period is marked by the Roman siege of 262 BC which caused the capitulation of the city after about six months, in 261 BC, and by the Carthaginian siege of 255 BC for the reconquest of the city. During the latter, a Roman garrison and the surviving inhabitants barricaded themselves in the temple of the Olympian Zeus turned into fortress for the occasion. During the Second Punic War, Akragas was still on the side of the Carthaginians who placed a garrison there (214 BC) until the city, betrayed by Numidian mercenaries, was taken by the Roman consul Levi in 210 BC and soon named Agrigentum.
In the Roman order of the provinces of Sicily, Agrigento was included among the “Civitas Decumanae” required to give Rome every year a tenth of their agricultural income. The city had a municipal “status” under Augustus. Excavations document a particularly prosperous period because of the thriving sulphur trade between the 2nd and 3rd century. Sources in writing as well as the presence of necropoles and places of worship bear witness to the Byzantine era: In the area of the catacombs, where the Temple of Concord was reused as a church; in the abandoned city area and at the northeastern slopes of the hill of the temples, where a "suburban Basilicula" is located.
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