The present Palazzo Comunale, a Renaissance edifice, contains a fine museum, chiefly remarkable for the contents of prehistoric tombs found in the district (including good bronze fibulae, necklaces, amulets, &c., often decorated with amber), and a large collection of acorn-shaped lead missiles (glandes) used by slingers, belonging to the time of the siege of Asculum during the Social War (89 B.C.).
Besides valuable contingents of the celebrated Balearic slingers, the Romans derived from their new conquest mules (from Minorca), edible snails, sinope and pitch.
Yet their military strength was not to be despised: in 426 their archers and slingers easily repelled an Athenian invasion under Demosthenes.
It is a curious feature that its noted slingers were said to be left-handed (Judg.
