The Lao (Greek: Λᾶος; Latin: Laus, Laos or Laüs; formerly also Laino) is a river of southern Italy. It is a considerable stream, rising in the Lucanian Apennines in the province of Potenza, Basilicata region and falling into the Gulf of Policastro (Italian: Golfo di Policastro) near Santa Maria del Cedro, province of Cosenza, Calabria region. Near its mouth are the ruins of the ancient Greek colony of Laüs. Pliny and Ptolemy and Strabo all describe the river and note that it was the boundary between Lucania and Bruttium in antiquity. (Strab. vi., p. 253; Plin. iii. 5. s. 10; Ptol. iii. 1. § 9) Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Potenza (It. ... Basilicata is a region in the south of Italy, bordering on Campania to the west, Puglia to the east, Calabria to the south, it has one short coastline on the Tyrrhenian Sea and another of the Gulf of Taranto in the Ionian Sea to the south-east. ... Santa Maria del Cedro is a town in the province of Cosenza, Calabria, Italy. ... Cosenza (It. ... Calabria (Latin: Bruttium or Brutium), is a region in southern Italy which occupies the toe of the Italian peninsula south of Naples. ... Ancient Greece is a period in Greek history that lasted for around one thousand years. ... Laüs or Laus or Laos (Greek:), was an ancient city on the west coast of Lucania, at the mouth of the river of the same name, which formed the boundary between Lucania and Bruttium; the site of Laüs is in the commune of Santa Maria del Cedro, Province... Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19c portrait. ... A medieval artists rendition of Claudius Ptolemaeus Claudius Ptolemaeus (Greek: ; c. ... The Greek geographer Strabo in a 16th century engraving. ... For the mountain in Canada named after Lucania, see Mount Lucania. ... Calabria, formerly Brutium, is a region in southern Italy which occupies the toe of the Italian peninsula south of Naples. ...

Strabo speaks of a gulf of Laüs, by which he can hardly mean any other than the extensive bay now called the Gulf of Policastro, which may be considered as extending from the promontory of Pynus (Capo degli Infreschi) to near Cirella.

References

• This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography by William Smith (1857).
• Rand McNally, The New International Atlas (1983), p. 69