these territories in 720 B. C., seem to have been rude petty
communities,—procuring for themselves safety by residence on lofty
eminences,—more pastoral than agricultural, and some of them
consuming the produce of their fields in common mess, on a principle
analogous to the syssitia of Sparta or Krête. King Italus was said
to have introduced this peculiarity[707] among the southernmost
portion of the Œnotrian population, and at the same time to have
bestowed upon them the name of Italians, though they were also known
by the name of Sikels. Throughout the centre of Calabria between
sea and sea, the high chain of the Apennines afforded protection to
a certain extent both to their independence and to their pastoral
habits. But these heights are made to be enjoyed in conjunction with
the plains beneath, so as to alternate winter and summer pasture for
the cattle: it is in this manner that the richness of the country is
rendered available, since a large portion of the mountain range is
buried in snow during the winter months. Such remarkable diversity
of soil and climate rendered Calabria a land of promise for Grecian
settlement: the plains and lower eminences being as productive of
corn, wine, oil, and flax, as the mountains in summer-pasture and
timber,—and abundance of rain falling upon the higher ground, which
requires only industry and care to be made to impart the maximum of
fertility to the lower: moreover, a long line of sea-coast,—though
not well furnished with harbors,—and an abundant supply of fish, came
in aid of the advantages of the soil. While the poorer freemen of the
Grecian cities were enabled to obtain small lots of fertile land in
the neighborhood, to be cultivated by their own hands, and to provide
for the most part their own food and clothing, the richer proprietors
made profitable use of the more distant portions of the territory by
means of their cattle, sheep, and slaves.
[707] Aristot. Polit. vii, 9, 3.
Of the Grecian towns on this favored coast, the earliest as well as
the most prosperous were Sybaris and Krotôn: both in the gulf of
Tarentum,—both of Achæan origin, and conterminous with each other
in respect of territory. Krotôn was placed not far to the west of
the south-eastern extremity of the gulf, called in ancient times
the Lakinian cape, and ennobled by the temple of the Lakinian Hêrê,
which became alike venerated and adorned by the Greek resident
as well as by the passing navigator: one solitary column of the
temple, the humble remnant of its past magnificence, yet marks the
extremity of this once celebrated promontory. Sybaris seems to have
been planted in the year 720 B. C., Krotôn in 710 B. C.: Iselikeus
was œkist of the former,[708] Myskellus of the latter. This large
Achæan emigration seems to have been connected with the previous
expulsion of the Achæan population from the more southerly region
of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, though in what precise manner we
are not enabled to see: the Achæan towns in Peloponnesus appear in
later times too inconsiderable to furnish emigrants, but probably
in the eighth century B. C. their population may have been larger.
The town of Sybaris was planted between two rivers, the Sybaris and
the Krathis,[709] the name of the latter borrowed from a river of
Achaia,—the town of Krotôn about twenty-five miles distant, on the
river Æsarus. The primitive settlers of Sybaris consisted in part
of Trœzenians, who were, however, subsequently expelled by the more
numerous Achæans,—a deed of violence which was construed by the
religious sentiment of Antiochus and some other Grecian historians,
as having drawn down upon them the anger of the gods in the ultimate
destruction of the city by the Krotoniates.[710]
[708] Strabo, vi, p. 263. Kramer, in his new edition of Strabo
follows Koray in suspecting the correctness of the name
Ἰσελικεὺς, which certainly departs from the usual analogy of
Grecian names. Assuming it to be incorrect, however, there are
no means of rectifying it: Kramer prints,—οἰκιστὴς δὲ αὐτῆς ὁ
Ἰσ...Ἑλικεὺς: thus making Ἑλικεὺς the ethnicon of the Achæan town
Helikê.
There were also legends which connected the foundation of Krotôn
with Hêraklês, who was affirmed to have been hospitably sheltered
by the eponymous hero Krotôn. Hêraklês was οἰκεῖος at Krotôn: see
Ovid, Metamorph. xv, 1-60; Jamblichus, Vit. Pythagor. c. 8, p.
30, c. 9, p. 37, ed Kuster.
[709] Herodot. i, 145.
[710] Strabo, vi, p. 262; Livy, xxiv, 3.
The fatal contest between these two cities, which ended in the ruin
of Sybaris, took place in 510 B. C., after the latter had subsisted
in her prosperity for two hundred and ten years. And the astonishing
prosperity to which both of them attained is a sufficient proof that
during the most of this period they had remained in peace at least,
if not in alliance and common Achæan brotherhood. Unfortunately, the
general fact of their great size, wealth, and power, is all that we
are permitted to know. The walls of Sybaris embraced a circuit of
fifty stadia, or more than six miles, while those of Krotôn were
even larger, and comprised not less than twelve miles:[711] a large
walled circuit was advantageous for sheltering the movable property
in the territory around, which was carried in on the arrival of an
invading enemy. Both cities possessed an extensive dominion across
the Calabrian peninsula from sea to sea; but the territorial range of
Sybaris seems to have been greater and her colonies wider and more
distant,—a fact which may, perhaps, explain the smaller circuit of
the city.
[711] Aristot. Polit. v, 2, 10
The Sybarites were founders of Laus and Skidrus, on the
Mediterranean sea in the gulf of Policastro, and even of the
more distant Poseidonia,—now known by its Latin name of Pæstum,
as well as by the temples which still remain to decorate its
deserted site. They possessed twenty-five dependent towns, and
ruled over four distinct native tribes or nations. What these
nations were we are not told,[712] but they were probably
different sections of the Œnotrian name. The Krotoniates also
reached across to the Mediterranean sea, and founded (upon
the gulf now called St. Euphemia) the town of Terina, and
seemingly also that of Lametini.[713] The inhabitants of the
Epizephyrian Lokri, which was situated in a more southern part
of Calabria Ultra, near the modern town of Gerace, extended
themselves in like manner across the peninsula, and founded
upon the Mediterranean coast the towns of Hippônium, Medma, and
Mataurum,[714] as well as Melæ and Itoneia, in localities not now
exactly ascertained.
[712] Strabo, vi, p. 263, v, p. 251; Skymn. Chi. v, 244; Herodot.
vi, 21.
[713] Stephan. Byz. v. Τέρινα—Λαμητῖνοι; Skymn. Chi. 305.
[714] Thucydid. v, 5; Strabo, vi, p. 256; Skymn. Chi. 307. Steph.
Byz. calls Mataurum πόλις Σικελίας.
Myskellus of Rhypes in Achaia, the founder of Krotôn under the
express indication of the Delphian oracle, is said to have thought
the site of Sybaris preferable, and to have solicited permission from
the oracle to plant his colony there, but he was admonished to obey
strictly the directions first given.[715] It is farther affirmed
that the foundation of Krotôn was aided by Archias, then passing
along the coast with his settlers for Syracuse, who is also brought
into conjunction in a similar manner with the foundation of Lokri:
but neither of these statements appears chronologically admissible.
The Italian Lokri (called Epizephyrian, from the neighborhood of
cape Zephyrium) was founded in the year 683 B. C. by settlers from
the Lokrians,—either the Ozolian Lokrians in the Krissæan gulf,
or those of Opus on the Eubœan strait. This point was disputed
even in antiquity, and perhaps both the one and the other may have
contributed: Euanthus was the œkist of the place.[716] The first
years of the Epizephyrian Lokri are said to have been years of
sedition and discord. And the vile character which we hear ascribed
to the primitive colonists, as well as their perfidious dealing with
the natives, are the more to be noted, as the Lokrians, of the times
both of Aristotle and of Polybius, fully believed these statements in
regard to their own ancestors.
[715] Herodot. viii, 47. Κροτωνιῆται, γένος εἰσὶν Ἀχαιοί: the
date of the foundation is given by Dionysius of Halikarnassus (A.
R. ii, 59).
The oracular commands delivered to Myskellus are found at length
in the Fragments of Diodorus, published by Maii (Scriptt. Vet.
Fragm. x, p. 8): compare Zenob. Proverb. Centur. iii, 42.
Though Myskellus is thus given as the œkist of Krotôn, yet we
find a Krotoniatic coin with the inscription Ἡρακλῆς Οἰκίστας
(Eckhel, Doctrin. Numm. Vet. vol. i, p. 172): the worship of
Hêraklês at Krotôn under this title is analogous to that of
Ἀπολλὼν Οἰκίστης καὶ Δωματίτης at Ægina (Pythænêtus ap. Schol.
Pindar. Nem. v, 81). There were various legends respecting
Hêraklês, the Eponymus Krotôn, and Lakinius. Herakleidês
Ponticus, Fragm. 30, ed. Köller; Diodor. iv, 24; Ovid, Metamorph.
xv, 1-53.
[716] Strabo, vi, p. 259. Euantheia, Hyantheia, or Œantheia,
was one of the towns of the Ozolian Lokrians on the north side
of the Krissæan gulf, from which, perhaps, the emigrants may
have departed, carrying with them the name and patronage of its
eponymous œkist (Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 15; Skylax, p. 14).
The original emigrants to Lokri were, according to Aristotle, a
body of runaway slaves, men-stealers, and adulterers, whose only
legitimate connection with an honorable Hellenic root arose from a
certain number of well-born Lokrian women who accompanied them. These
women belonged to those select families called the Hundred Houses,
who constituted what may be called the nobility of the Lokrians in
Greece proper, and their descendants continued to enjoy a certain
rank and preëminence in the colony, even in the time of Polybius. The
emigration is said to have been occasioned by disorderly intercourse
between these noble Lokrian women and their slaves,—perhaps by
intermarriage with persons of inferior station, where there had
existed no recognized _connubium_;[717] a fact referred, by the
informants of Aristotle, to the long duration of the first Messenian
war,—the Lokrian warriors having for the most part continued in the
Messenian territory as auxiliaries of the Spartans during the twenty
years of that war,[718] permitting themselves only rare and short
visits to their homes. This is a story resembling that which we shall
find in explanation of the colony of Tarentum. It comes to us too
imperfectly to admit of criticism or verification; but the unamiable
character of the first emigrants is a statement deserving credit,
and very unlikely to have been invented. Their first proceedings on
settling in Italy display a perfidy in accordance with the character
ascribed to them. They found the territory in this southern portion
of the Calabrian peninsula possessed by native Sikels, who, alarmed
at their force, and afraid to try the hazard of resistance, agreed
to admit them to a participation and joint residence. The covenant
was concluded and sworn to by both parties in the following terms:
“There shall be friendship between us, and we will enjoy the land
in common, so long as we stand upon this earth and have heads upon
our shoulders.” At the time when the oath was taken, the Lokrians
had put earth into their shoes and concealed heads of garlic upon
their shoulders; so that, when they had divested themselves of these
appendages, the oath was considered as no longer binding. Availing
themselves of the first convenient opportunity, they attacked the
Sikels by surprise and drove them out of the territory, of which
they thus acquired the exclusive possession.[719] Their first
establishment was formed upon the headland itself, cape Zephyrium
(now Bruzzano); but after three or four years the site of the town
was moved to an eminence in the neighboring plain, in which the
Syracusans are said to have aided them.[720]
[717] Polyb. xii, 5, 8, 9; Dionys. Perieget. v, 365.
[718] This fact may connect the foundation of the colony of Lokri
with Sparta; but the statement of Pausanias (iii, 3, 1), that the
Spartans in the reign of king Polydorus founded both Lokri and
Krotôn, seems to belong to a different historical conception.
[719] Polyb. xii, 5-12.
[720] Strabo, vi, p. 259. We find that, in the accounts given of
the foundation of Korkyra, Krotôn, and Lokri, reference is made
to the Syracusan settlers, either as contemporary in the way
of companionship, or as auxiliaries: perhaps the accounts all
come from the Syracusan historian Antiochus, who exaggerated the
intervention of his own ancestors.
In describing the Grecian settlers in Sicily, I have already stated
that they are to be considered as Greeks with a considerable infusion
of blood, of habits, and of manners, from the native Sikels: the case
is the same with the Italiots, or Italian Greeks, and in respect to
these Epizephyrian Lokrians, especially, we find it expressly noticed
by Polybius. Composed as their band was of ignoble and worthless men,
not bound together by strong tribe-feelings or traditional customs,
they were the more ready to adopt new practices, as well religious
as civil,[721] from the Sikels. One in particular is noticed by
the historian,—the religious dignity called the Phialêphorus, or
censer-bearer, enjoyed among the native Sikels by a youth of noble
birth, who performed the duties belonging to it in their sacrifices;
but the Lokrians, while they identified themselves with the religious
ceremony, and adopted both the name and the dignity, altered the
sex, and conferred it upon one of those women of noble blood who
constituted the ornament of their settlement. Even down to the
days of Polybius, some maiden descended from one of these select
Hundred Houses, still continued to bear the title and to perform the
ceremonial duties of Phialêphorus. We learn from these statements how
large a portion of Sikels must have become incorporated as dependents
in the colony of the Epizephyrian Lokri, and how strongly marked was
the intermixture of their habits with those of the Greek settlers;
while the tracing back among them of all eminence of descent to a few
emigrant women of noble birth, is a peculiarity belonging exclusively
to their city.
[721] “Nil patrium, nisi nomen, habet Romanus alumnus,” observes
Propertius (iv, 37) respecting the Romans: repeated with still
greater bitterness in the epistle in Sallust from Mithridatês to
Arsacês, (p. 191, Delph. ed.) The remark is well-applicable to
Lokri.
That a body of colonists, formed of such unpromising materials,
should have fallen into much lawlessness and disorder, is noway
surprising; but these mischiefs appear to have become so utterly
intolerable in the early years of the colony, as to force upon every
one the necessity of some remedy. Hence arose a phenomenon new in the
march of Grecian society,—the first promulgation of written laws.
The Epizephyrian Lokrians, having applied to the Delphian oracle for
some healing suggestion under their distress, were directed to make
laws for themselves;[722] and received the ordinances of a shepherd
named Zaleukus, which he professed to have learned from the goddess
Athênê in a dream. His laws are said to have been put in writing and
promulgated in 664 B. C., forty years earlier than those of Drako at
Athens.
[722] Aristot. ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. x, 17.
That these first of all Grecian written laws were few and simple,
we may be sufficiently assured. The only fact certain respecting
them is their extraordinary rigor:[723] they seem to have enjoined
the application of the _lex talionis_ as a punishment for personal
injuries. In this general character of his laws, Zaleukus was the
counterpart of Drako. But so little was certainly known, and so
much falsely asserted, respecting him, that Timæus the historian
went so far as to call in question his real existence,[724]—against
the authority not only of Ephorus, but also of Aristotle and
Theophrastus. The laws must have remained, however, for a long time,
formally unchanged; for so great was the aversion of the Lokrians,
we are told, to any new law, that the man who ventured to propose
one appeared in public with a rope round his neck, which was at once
tightened if he failed to convince the assembly of the necessity of
his proposition.[725] Of the government of the Epizephyrian Lokri we
know only, that in later times it included a great council of one
thousand members, and a chief executive magistrate called Kosmopolis:
it is spoken of also as strictly and carefully administered.
[723] Proverb. Zenob. Centur. iv, 20. Ζαλεύκου νόμος, ἐπὶ τῶν
ἀποτόμων.
[724] Strabo, vi, p. 259; Skymnus Chius, v, 313; Cicero de Legg.
ii, 6, and Epist. ad Atticum, vi, 1.
Heyne, Opuscula, vol. ii, Epimetrum ii, pp. 60-68; Göller
ad Timæi Fragment, pp. 220-259. Bentley (on the Epistles of
Phalaris, ch. xii, p 274) seems to countenance, without adequate
reason, the doubt of Timæus about the existence of Zaleukus.
But the statement of Ephorus, that Zaleukus had collected his
ordinances from the Kretan, Laconian, and Areiopagitic customs,
when contrasted with the simple and far more credible statement
above cited from Aristotle, shows how loose were the affirmations
respecting the Lokrian lawgiver (ap. Strabo, vi, p. 260). Other
statements, also, concerning him, alluded to by Aristotle
(Politic. ii, 9, 3), were distinctly at variance with chronology.
Charondas, the lawgiver of the Chalkidic towns in Italy and
Sicily, as far as we can judge amidst much confusion of
testimony, seems to belong to an age much later than Zaleukus: I
shall speak of him hereafter.
[725] Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 744; Polyb. xii, 10.
The date of Rhegium (Reggio), separated from the territory of the
Epizephyrian Lokri by the river Halex, must have been not only
earlier than Lokri, but even earlier than Sybaris,—if the statement
of Antiochus be correct, that the colonists were joined by those
Messenians, who, prior to the first Messenian war, were anxious
to make reparation to the Spartans for the outrage offered to the
Spartan maidens at the temple of Artemis Limnatis, but were overborne
by their countrymen and forced into exile. A different version,
however, is given by Pausanias of this migration of Messenians to
Rhegium, yet still admitting the fact of such migration at the close
of the first Messenian war, which would place the foundation of the
city earlier than 720 B. C. Though Rhegium was a Chalkidic colony,
yet a portion of its inhabitants seem to have been undoubtedly of
Messenian origin, and amongst them Anaxilas, despot of the town
between 500-470 B. C., who traced his descent through two centuries
to a Messenian emigrant named Alkidamidas.[726] The celebrity and
power of Anaxilas, just at the time when the ancient history of the
Greek towns was beginning to be set forth in prose, and with some
degree of system, caused the Messenian element in the population
of Rhegium to be noticed prominently; but the town was essentially
Chalkidic, connected by colonial sisterhood with the Chalkidic
settlements in Sicily,—Zanklê, Naxos, Katana, and Leontini. The
original emigrants departed from Chalkis, as a tenth of the citizens
consecrated by vow to Apollo in consequence of famine; and the
directions of the god, as well as the invitation of the Zanklæans,
guided their course to Rhegium. The town was flourishing, and
acquired a considerable number of dependent villages around,[727]
inhabited doubtless by cultivators of the indigenous population.
But it seems to have been often at variance with the conterminous
Lokrians, and received one severe defeat, in conjunction with the
Tarentines, which will be hereafter recounted.
[726] Strabo, vi, p. 257; Pausan. iv, 23, 2.
[727] Strabo, vi, p. 258. ἴσχυσε δὲ μάλιστα ἡ τῶν Ῥηγινῶν πόλις,
καὶ περιοικίδας ἔσχε συχνὰς, etc.
Between Lokri and the Lakinian cape were situated the Achæan colony
of Kaulônia, and Skyllêtium; the latter seemingly included in the
domain of Krotôn, though pretending to have been originally founded
by Menestheus, the leader of the Athenians at the siege of Troy:
Petilia, also, a hill-fortress north-west of the Lakinian cape, as
well as Makalla, both comprised in the territory of Krotôn, were
affirmed to have been founded by Philoktêtês. Along all this coast of
the gulf of Tarentum, there were various establishments ascribed to
the heroes of the Trojan war,[728]—Epeius, Philoktêtês, Nestor,—or
to their returning troops. Of these establishments, probably the
occupants had been small, miscellaneous, unacknowledged bands
of Grecian adventurers,[729] who assumed to themselves the most
honorable origin which they could imagine, and who became afterwards
absorbed into the larger colonial establishments which followed; the
latter adopting and taking upon themselves the heroic worship of
Philoktêtês or other warriors from Troy, which the prior emigrants
had begun.
[728] Strabo, vi. p. 263; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 106; Athenæ.
xii, p. 523. It is to these reputed Rhodian companions of
Tlêpolemus before Troy, that the allusion in Strabo refers, to
Rhodian occupants near Sybaris (xiv, p. 655).
[729] See Mannert, Geographie, part ix, b. 9, ch. 11, p. 234.
During the flourishing times of Sybaris and Krotôn, it seems that
these two great cities divided the whole length of the coast of the
Tarentine gulf, from the spot now called Rocca Imperiale down to the
south of the Lakinian cape. Between the point where the dominion
of Sybaris terminated on the Tarentine side, and Tarentum itself,
there were two considerable Grecian settlements,—Siris, afterwards
called Herakleia, and Metapontium. The fertility and attraction of
the territory of Siris, with its two rivers, Akiris and Siris, were
well known even to the poet Archilochus[730] (660 B. C.), but we do
not know the date at which it passed from the indigenous Chônians
or Chaonians into the hands of Greek settlers. A citizen of Siris
is mentioned among the suitors for the daughter of the Sikyonian
Kleisthenês, (580-560 B. C.) We are told that some Kolophonian
fugitives, emigrating to escape the dominion of the Lydian kings,
attacked and possessed themselves of the spot, giving to it the
name Polieion. The Chônians of Siris ascribed to themselves a Trojan
origin, exhibiting a wooden image of the Ilian Athênê, which they
affirmed to have been brought away by their fugitive ancestors after
the capture of Troy. When the town was stormed by the Ionians,
many of the inhabitants clung to this relic for protection, but
were dragged away and slain by the victors,[731] whose sacrilege
was supposed to have been the cause that their settlement was not
durable. At the time of the invasion of Greece by Xerxês, the fertile
territory of Siritis was considered as still open to be colonized;
for the Athenians when their affairs appeared desperate, had this
scheme of emigration in reserve as a possible resource;[732] and
there were inspired declarations from some of the contemporary
prophets, which encouraged them to undertake it. At length, after the
town of Thurii had been founded by Athens, in the vicinity of the
dismantled Sybaris, the Thurians tried to possess themselves of the
Siritid territoiy, but were opposed by the Tarentines.[733] According
to the compromise concluded between them, Tarentum was recognized as
the metropolis of the colony, but joint possession was allowed both
to Tarentines and Thurians. The former transferred the site of the
city, under the new name Herakleia, to a spot three miles from the
sea, leaving Siris as the place of maritime access to it.[734]
[730] Archiloch. Fragm. 17, ed. Schneidewin.
[731] Herodot. vi, 127; Strabo, vi, p. 263. The name Polieion
seems to be read Πλεῖον in Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. 106.
Niebuhr assigns this Kolophonian settlement of Siris to the
reign of Gygês in Lydia; for which I know no other evidence
except the statement that Gygês took τῶν Κολοφωνίων τὸ ἄστυ
(Herodot. i, 14); but this is no proof that the inhabitants then
emigrated; for Kolophôn was a very flourishing and prosperous
city afterwards.
Justin (xx, 2) gives a case of sacrilegious massacre committed
near the statue of Athênê at Siris, which appears to be totally
different from the tale respecting the Kolophonians.
[732] Herodot. viii, 62.
[733] Strabo, vi, p. 264.
[734] Strabo, vi, p. 264.
About twenty-five miles eastward of Siris, on the coast of the
Tarentine gulf, was situated Metapontium, a Greek town which was
affirmed by some to draw its origin from the Pylian companions
of Nestor,—by others, from the Phocian warriors of Epeius, on
their return from Troy. The proofs of the former were exhibited
in the worship of the Neleid heroes,—the proofs of the latter in
the preservation of the reputed identical tools with which Epeius
had constructed the Trojan horse.[735] Metapontium was planted on
the territory of the Chônians or Œnotrians, but the first colony
is said to have been destroyed by an attack of the Samnites,[736]
at what period we do not know. It had been founded by some Achæan
settlers,—under the direction of the œkist Daulius, despot of the
Phocian Krissa, and invited by the inhabitants of Sybaris, who feared
that the place might be appropriated by the neighboring Tarentines,
colonists from Sparta and hereditary enemies in Peloponnesus of
the Achæan race. Before the new settlers arrived, however, the
place seems to have been already appropriated by the Tarentines;
for the Achæan Leukippus only obtained their permission to land by
a fraudulent promise, and, after all, had to sustain a forcible
struggle both with them and with the neighboring Œnotrians, which
was compromised by a division of territory. The fertility of the
Metapontine territory was hardly less celebrated than that of the
Siritid.[737]
[735] Strabo, _l. c._; Justin, xx, 2; Velleius Paterc. i, 1;
Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 108. This story respecting the
presence and implements of Epeius may have arisen through the
Phocian settlers from Krissa.
[736] The words of Strabo—ἠφανίσθη δ᾽ ὑπὸ Σαυνιτῶν (vi, p. 264)
can hardly be connected with the immediately following narrative,
which he gives out of Antiochus, respecting the revival of
the place by new Achæan settlers, invited by the Achæans of
Sybaris. For the latter place was reduced to impotence in 510
B. C.: invitations by the Achæans of Sybaris must, therefore,
be anterior to that date. If Daulius despot of Krissa is to be
admitted as the œkist of Metapontium, the plantation of it must
be placed early in the first half of the sixth century B. C.; but
there is great difficulty in admitting the extension of Samnite
conquests to the gulf of Tarentum at so early a period as this.
I therefore construe the words of Antiochus as referring to the
original settlement of Metapontium by the Greeks, not to the
revival of the town after its destruction by the Samnites.
[737] Strabo, _l. c._; Stephanus Byz. (v. Μεταπόντιον) identifies
Metapontium and Siris in a perplexing manner.
Livy (xxv, 15) recognizes Metapontium as Achæan: compare Heyne
Opuscula, vol. ii, Prolus. xii, p. 207.
Farther eastward of Metapontium, again at the distance of about
twenty-five miles, was situated the great city of Taras, or
Tarentum, a colony from Sparta founded after the first Messenian
war, seemingly about 707 B. C. The œkist Phalanthus, said to have
been an Herakleid, was placed at the head of a body of Spartan
emigrants,—consisting principally of some citizens called Epeunaktæ,
and of the youth called Partheniæ, who had been disgraced by their
countrymen on account of their origin, and were on the point of
breaking out into rebellion. It was out of the Messenian war that
this emigration is stated to have arisen, in a manner analogous to
that which has been stated respecting the Epizephyrian Lokrians.
The Lacedæmonians, before entering Messenia to carry on the war,
had made a vow not to return until they should have completed the
conquest; a vow in which it appears that some of them declined to
take part, standing altogether aloof from the expedition. When the
absent soldiers returned after many years of absence consumed in
the war, they found a numerous progeny which had been born to their
wives and daughters during the interval, from intercourse with those
(Epeunaktæ) who had stayed at home. The Epeunaktæ were punished by
being degraded to the rank and servitude of Helots; the children thus
born, called Partheniæ,[738] were also cut off from all the rights
of citizenship, and held in dishonor. But the parties punished were
numerous enough to make themselves formidable, and a conspiracy was
planned among them, intended to break out at the great religious
festival of the Hyacinthia, in the temple of the Amyklæan Apollo.
Phalanthus was the secret chief of the conspirators, who agreed to
commence their attack upon the authorities at the moment when he
should put on his helmet. The leader, however, never intending that
the scheme should be executed, betrayed it beforehand, stipulating
for the safety of all those implicated in it. At the commencement of
the festival, when the multitude were already assembled, a herald
was directed to proclaim aloud, that Phalanthus would not on that
day put on his helmet,—a proclamation which at once revealed to the
conspirators that they were betrayed. Some of them sought safety
in flight, others assumed the posture of suppliants; but they were
merely detained in confinement, with assurance of safety, while
Phalanthus was sent to the Delphian oracle to ask advice respecting
emigration. He is said to have inquired whether he might be permitted
to appropriate the fertile plain of Sikyon, but the Pythian priestess
emphatically dissuaded him, and enjoined him to conduct his
emigrants to Satyrium and Tarentum, where he would be “a mischief
to the Iapygians.” Phalanthus obeyed, and conducted the detected
conspirators as emigrants to the Tarentine gulf,[739] which he
reached a few years after the foundation of Sybaris and Krotôn by the
Achæans. According to Ephorus, he found these prior emigrants at war
with the natives, aided them in the contest, and received in return
their aid to accomplish his own settlement. But this can hardly
have consisted with the narrative of Antiochus, who represented
the Achæans of Sybaris as retaining, even in their colonies,
the hatred against the Dorian name which they had contracted in
Peloponnesus.[740] Antiochus stated that Phalanthus and his colonists
were received in a friendly manner by the indigenous inhabitants, and
allowed to establish their new town in tranquillity.
[738] Partheniæ, _i. e. children of virgins_: the description
given by Varro of the Illyrian _virgines_ illustrates this
phrase: “Quas _virgines_ ibi appellant, nonnunquam annorum xx,
quibus mos eorum non denegavit, ante nuptias ut succumberent
quibus vellent, et incomitatis ut vagari liceret, et _liberos
habere_.” (Varro, De Re Rusticâ, ii, 10, 9.)
[739] For this story respecting the foundation of Tarentum, see
Strabo, vi, pp. 278-280 (who gives the versions both of Antiochus
and Ephorus); Justin, iii, 4; Diodorus, xv, 66; Excerpta Vatican.
lib. vii-x, ed. Maii, Fr. 12; Servius ad Virgil. Æneid. iii, 551.
There are several points of difference between Antiochus,
Ephorus, and Servius; the story given in the text follows the
former.
The statement of Hesychius (v. Παρθενεῖαι) seems on the whole
some what more intelligible than that given by Strabo,—Οἱ κατὰ
τὸν Μεσσηνιακὸν πόλεμον αὐτοῖς γενόμενοι ἐκ τῶν θεραπαίνων·
καὶ οἱ ἐξ ἀνεκδότου λάθρα γεννώμενοι παῖδες. Justin translates
Partheniæ, _Spurii_.
The local eponymous heroes Taras and Satyrus (from Satyrium) were
celebrated and worshipped among the Tarentines. See Cicero, Verr.
iv, 60, 13; Servius ad Virg. Georg. ii, 197; Zumpt. ap. Orelli,
Onomasticon Tullian. ii, p. 570.
[740] Compare Strabo, vi, p. 264 and p. 280.
If such was really the fact, it proves that the native inhabitants
of the soil must have been of purely inland habits, making no use of
the sea either for commerce or for fishery, otherwise they would
hardly have relinquished such a site as that of Tarentum,—which,
while favorable and productive, even in regard to the adjoining land,
was with respect to sea-advantages without a parallel in Grecian
Italy.[741] It was the only spot in the gulf which possessed a
perfectly safe and convenient harbor,—a spacious inlet of the sea
is there formed, sheltered by an isthmus and an outlying peninsula,
so as to leave only a narrow entrance. This inlet, still known as
the Mare Piccolo, though its shores and the adjoining tongue of land
appear to have undergone much change, affords at the present day a
constant, inexhaustible, and varied supply of fish, especially of
shell-fish; which furnish both nourishment and employment to a large
proportion among the inhabitants of the contracted modern Taranto,
just as they once served the same purpose to the numerous, lively,
and jovial population of the mighty Tarentum. The concentrated
population of fishermen formed a predominant element in the character
of the Tarentine democracy.[742] Tarentum was just on the borders
of the country originally known as Italy, within which Herodotus
includes it, while Antiochus considers it in Iapygia, and regards
Metapontium as the last Greek town in Italy.
[741] Strabo, vi, p. 278; Polyb. x, 1.
[742] Juvenal, Sat. vi, 297. “Atque coronatum et petulans
madidumque Tarentum:” compare Plato, Legg. i, p. 637; and Horat.
Satir. ii, 4, 34. Aristot. Polit. iv, 4, 1. οἱ ἁλιεῖς ἐν Τάραντι
καὶ Βυζαντίῳ. “Tarentina ostrea,” Varro, Fragm. p. 301, ed.
Bipont.
To illustrate this remark of Aristotle on the fishermen of
Tarentum, as the predominant class in the democracy, I transcribe
a passage from Mr. Keppel Craven’s Tour in the Southern Provinces
of Naples, ch. x, p. 182. “Swinburne gives a list of ninety-three
different sorts of shell-fish which are found in the gulf of
Taranto; but more especially in the Mare Piccolo. Among these, in
ancient times, the murex and purpura ranked foremost in value;
in our degenerate days, the mussel and oyster seem to have
usurped a preëminence as acknowledged but less dignified; but
there are numerous other tribes held in proportionate estimation
for their exquisite flavor, and as greedily sought for during
their respective seasons. The appetite for shell-fish of all
sorts, which seems peculiar to the natives of these regions,
is such as to appear exaggerated to a foreigner, accustomed to
consider only a few of them as eatable. This taste exists at
Taranto, if possible, in a stronger degree than in any other
part of the kingdom, and accounts for the comparatively large
revenue which government draws from this particular branch of
commerce. The Mare Piccolo is divided into several portions,
which are let to different societies, who thereby become the only
privileged fishermen; the lower classes are almost all employed
by these corporations, as every revolving season of the year
affords occupation for them, so that Nature herself seems to have
afforded the exclusive trade most suited to the inhabitants of
Taranto. Both seas abound with varieties of testacea, but the
inner gulf (the Mare Piccolo) is esteemed most favorable to their
growth and flavor; the sandy bed is literally blackened by the
mussels that cover it; the boats that glide over its surface are
laden with them; they emboss the rocks that border the strand,
and appear equally abundant on the shore, piled up in heaps.”
Mr. Craven goes on to illustrate still farther the wonderful
abundance of this fishery; but that which has been already
transcribed, while it illustrates the above-noticed remark of
Aristotle, will at the same time help to explain the prosperity
and physical abundance of the ancient Tarentum.
For an elaborate account of the state of cultivation, especially
of the olive, near the degenerate modern Taranto, see the Travels
of M. De Salis Marschlins in the Kingdom of Naples (translated by
Aufrere, London, 1795), sect. 5, pp. 82-107, 163-178.
Its immediate neighbors were the Iapygians, who, under various
subdivisions of name and dialect, seem to have occupied the greater
part of south-eastern Italy, including the peninsula denominated
after them,—yet sometimes also called the Salentine,—between the
Adriatic and the Tarentine gulf,—and who are even stated at one time
to have occupied some territory on the south east of that gulf, near
the site of Krotôn. The Iapygian name appears to have comprehended
Messapians, Salentines, and Kalabrians; according to some, even
Peuketians and Daunians, as far along the Adriatic as Mount Garganus,
or Drion; Skylax notices in his time (about 360 B. C.) five different
tongues in the country which he calls Iapygia.[743] The Messapians
and Salentines are spoken of as emigrants from Krête, akin to the
Minoian or primitive Kretans; and we find a national genealogy
which recognizes Iapyx son of Dædalus, an emigrant from Sicily.
But the story told to Herodotus was, that the Kretan soldiers who
had accompanied Minos in his expedition to recover Dædalus from
Kamikus in Sicily, were on their return home cast away on the shores
of Iapygia, and became the founders of Hyria and other Messapian
towns in the interior of the country.[744] Brundusium also, or
Brentesion, as the Greeks called it,[745] inconsiderable in the days
of Herodotus, but famous in the Roman times afterwards, as the most
frequented seaport for voyaging to Epirus, was a Messapian town. The
native language spoken by the Iapygian Messapians was a variety of
the Oscan: the Latin poet Ennius, a native of Rudiæ in the Iapygian
peninsula, spoke Greek, Latin, and Oscan, and even deduced his
pedigree from the ancient national prince or hero Messapus.[746]
[743] Skylax does not mention at all the name of Italy; he
gives to the whole coast, from Rhegium to Poseidonia on the
Mediterranean, and from the same point to the limit between
Thurii and Herakleia on the gulf of Tarentum, the name of Lucania
(c. 12-13). From this point he extends Iapygia to the Mount
Drion, or Garganus, so that he includes not only Metapontium, but
also Herakleia in Iapygia.
Antiochus draws the line between Italy and Iapygia at the
extremity of the Metapontine territory; comprehending Metapontium
in Italy, and Tarentum in Iapygia (Antiochus, Frag. 6, ed. Didot;
ap. Strabo, vi, p. 254).
Herodotus, however, speaks not only of Metapontium but also of
Tarentum, as being in Italy (i, 24; iii, 136; iv, 15).
I notice this discrepancy of geographical speech, between the
two contemporaries Herodotus and Antiochus, the more especially,
because Niebuhr has fallen into a mistake by exclusively
following Antiochus, and by saying that _no writer_, even of
the days of Plato, would have spoken of Tarentum as being _in
Italy_, or of the Tarentines as Italiots. This is perfectly true
respecting Antiochus, but is certainly not true with respect
to Herodotus; nor can it be shown to be true with respect
to Thucydidês,—for the passage of the latter, which Niebuhr
produces, does not sustain his inference. (Niebuhr, Römische
Geschichte, vol. i. pp. 16-18, 2d edit.)
[744] Herodot. vii, 170: Pliny, H. N. iii, 16; Athenæ. xii, p.
523; Servius ad Virgil. Æneid. viii, 9.
[745] Herodot. iv. 99.
[746] Servius ad Virgil. Æneid. vii, 691. Polybius distinguishes
Iapygians from Messapians (ii, 24).
We are told that during the lifetime of Phalanthus, the Tarentine
settlers gained victories over the Messapians and Peuketians, which
they commemorated afterwards by votive offerings at Delphi,—and
that they even made acquisitions at the expense of the inhabitants
of Brundusium,[747]—a statement difficult to believe, if we look
to the distance of the latter place, and to the circumstance that
Herodotus, even in his time, names it only as a harbor. Phalanthus
too, driven into exile, is said to have found a hospitable reception
at Brundusium, and to have died there. Of the history of Tarentum,
however, during the first two hundred and thirty years of its
existence, we possess no details; we have reason to believe that it
partook in the general prosperity of the Italian Greeks during those
two centuries, though it remained inferior both to Sybaris and to
Krotôn. About the year 510 B. C., these two latter republics went
to war, and Sybaris was nearly destroyed; while in the subsequent
half-century, the Krotoniates suffered the terrible defeat of Sagra
from the Lokrians, and the Tarentines experienced an equally ruinous
defeat from the Iapygian Messapians. From these reverses, however,
the Tarentines appear to have recovered more completely than the
Krotoniates; for the former stand first among the Italiots, or
Italian Greeks, from the year 400 B. C. down to the supremacy of the
Romans, and made better head against the growth of the Lucanians and
Bruttians of the interior.
[747] Pausanias, x, 10, 3; x, 13, 5; Strabo, vi, p. 282: Justin,
iii, 4.
Such were the chief cities of the Italian Greeks from Tarentum on
the upper sea to Poseidonia on the lower; and if we take them during
the period preceding the ruin of Sybaris (in 510 B. C.), they will
appear to have enjoyed a degree of prosperity even surpassing that
of the Sicilian Greeks. The dominion of Sybaris, Krotôn, and Lokri
extended across the peninsula from sea to sea, and the mountainous
regions of the interior of Calabria were held in amicable connection
with the cities and cultivators in the plain and valley near the
sea,—to the reciprocal advantage of both. The petty native tribes of
Œnotrians, Sikels, or Italians, properly so called, were partially
Hellenized, and brought into the condition of village cultivators and
shepherds, dependent upon Sybaris and its fellow cities; a portion of
them dwelling in the town, probably, as domestic slaves of the rich
men, but most of them remaining in the country as serfs, penestæ, or
coloni, intermingled with Greek settlers, and paying over parts of
their produce to Greek proprietors.
But this dependence, though accomplished in the first instance
by force, was yet not upheld exclusively by force,—it was to a
great degree the result of an organized march of life, and of more
productive cultivation brought within their reach,—of new wants, both
created and supplied,—of temples, festivals, ships, walls, chariots,
etc., which imposed upon the imagination of the rude landsman and
shepherd. Against mere force the natives could have found shelter
in the unconquerable forests and ravines of the Calabrian Apennines,
and in that vast mountain region of the Sila, lying immediately
behind the plains of Sybaris, where even the French army, with its
excellent organization, in 1807, found so much difficulty in reaching
the bandit villagers.[748] It was not by arms alone, but by arms and
arts combined,—a mingled influence, such as enabled imperial Rome
to subdue the fierceness of the rude Germans and Britons,—that the
Sybarites and Krotoniates acquired and maintained their ascendency
over the natives of the interior. The shepherd of the banks of the
river Sybaris or Krathis not only found a new exchangeable value for
his cattle and other produce, becoming familiar with better diet and
clothing, and improved cultivation of the olive and the vine,—but
he was also enabled to display his prowess, if strong and brave, in
the public games at the festival of the Lakinian Hêrê, or even at
the Olympic games in Peloponnesus.[749] It is thus that we have to
explain the extensive dominion, the great population and the wealth
and luxury of the Sybarites and Krotoniates,—a population of which
the incidental reports as given in figures are not trustworthy, but
which we may well believe to have been very numerous. The native
Œnotrians, while unable to combine in resisting Greek force, were
at the same time less widely distinguished from the Greeks, in race
and language, than the Oscans of middle Italy, and therefore more
accessible to Greek pacific influences; while the Oscan race seem
to have been both fiercer in repelling the assaults of the Greeks,
and more intractable as to their seductions. Nor were the Iapygians
modified by the neighborhood of Tarentum, in the same degree as the
tribes adjoining to Sybaris and Krotôn were by their contact with
those cities. The dialect of Tarentum,[750] as well as of Herakleia,
though a marked Doric, admitted many local peculiarities, and the
farces of the Tarentine poet Rhinthon, like the Syracusan Sophron,
seem to have blended the Hellenic with the Italic in language as well
as in character.
[748] See a description of the French military operations in
these almost inaccessible regions, contained in a valuable
publication by a French general officer, on service in that
country for three years, “Calabria during a Military Residence of
three years,” London, 1832, Letter xx, p. 201.
The whole picture of Calabria contained in this volume is both
interesting and instructive: military operations had never before
been carried on, probably, in the mountains of the Sila.
[749] See Theokritus, Idyll, iv, 6-35, which illustrates the
point here stated.
[750] Suidas, v. Ῥίνθων; Stephan. Byz. v. Τάρας: compare
Bernhardy, Grundriss der Römischen Litteratur, Abschnitt ii, pt.
2, pp. 185-186, about the analogy of these φλύακες of Rhinthon
with the native Italic Mimes.
The dialect of the other cities of Italic Greece is very little
known: the ancient Inscription of Petilia is Doric: see Ahrens,
De Dialecto Doricâ, sect. 49, p. 418.
About the year 560 B. C., the time of the accession of Peisistratus
at Athens, the close of what may properly be called the first period
of Grecian history, Sybaris and Krotôn were at the maximum of their
power, which each maintained for half a century afterwards, until
the fatal dissension between them. We are told that the Sybarites,
in that final contest, marched against Krotôn with an army of three
hundred thousand men: fabulous as this number doubtless is, we
cannot doubt that, for an irruption of this kind into an adjoining
territory, their large body of semi-Hellenized native subjects
might be mustered in prodigious force. The few statements which
have reached us respecting them touch, unfortunately, upon little
more than their luxury, fantastic self-indulgence, and extravagant
indolence, for which qualities they have become proverbial in modern
times as well as in ancient. Anecdotes illustrating these qualities
were current, and served more than one purpose, in antiquity. The
philosopher recounted them, in order to discredit and denounce
the character which they exemplified,—while among gay companies,
“Sybaritic tales,” or tales respecting sayings and doing of ancient
Sybarites, formed a separate and special class of excellent
stories, to be told simply for amusement,[751]—with which view
witty romancers multiplied them indefinitely. It is probable that
the Pythagorean philosophers (who belonged originally to Krotôn,
but maintained themselves permanently as a philosophical sect in
Italy and Sicily, with a strong tinge of ostentatious asceticism
and mysticism), in their exhortations to temperance and in their
denunciations of luxurious habits, might select by preference
examples from Sybaris, the ancient enemy of the Krotonians, to
point their moral,—and that the exaggerated reputation of the city
thus first became the subject of common talk throughout the Grecian
world; for little could be actually known of Sybaris in detail,
since its humiliation dates from the first commencement of Grecian
contemporaneous history. Hekatæus of Milêtus may perhaps have visited
it in its full splendor, but even Herodotus knew it only by past
report, and the principal anecdotes respecting it are cited from
authors considerably later than him, who follow the tone of thought
so common in antiquity, in ascribing the ruin of the Sybarites to
their overweening corruption and luxury.[752]
[751] Aristophan. Vesp. 1260. Αἰσωπικὸν γελοῖον, ἢ Συβαριτικόν.
What is meant by Συβαριτικὸν γελοῖον is badly explained by the
Scholiast, but is perfectly well illustrated by Aristophanês
himself, in subsequent verses of the same play (1427-1436), where
Philokleon tells two good stories respecting “a Sybaritan man,”
and a “woman in Sybaris:” Ἀνὴρ Συβαρίτης ἐξέπεσεν ἐξ ἅρματος,
etc.—ἐν Συβάρει γυνή ποτε Κατέαξ᾽ ἐχῖνον, etc.
These Συβάρια ἐπιφθέγματα are as old as Epicharmus, whose mind
was much imbued with the Pythagorean philosophy. See Etymolog.
Magn. Συβαρίζειν. Ælian amused himself also with the ἱστόριαι
Συβαριτικαί (V. H. xiv, 20): compare Hesychius, Συβαριτικοὶ
λόγοι, and Suidas, Συβαριτικαῖς.
[752] Thus Herodotus (vi, 127) informs us that, at the time when
Kleisthenês of Sikyon invited from all Greece suitors of proper
dignity for the hand of his daughter, Smindyridês of Sybaris
came among the number, “the most delicate and luxurious man
ever known,” (ἐπὶ πλεῖστον δὴ χλιδῆς εἷς ἀνὴρ ἀφίκετο—Herodot.
vi, 127), and Sybaris was at that time (B. C. 580-560) in
its greatest prosperity. In Chamæleon, Timæus, and other
writers subsequent to Aristotle, greater details were given.
Smindyridês was said to have taken with him to the marriage
one thousand domestic servants, fishermen, bird-catchers, and
cooks (Athenæ. vi, 271; xii, 541). The details of Sybaritic
luxury, given in Athenæus, are chiefly borrowed from writers of
this post-Aristotelian age,—Herakleidês of Pontus, Phylarchus,
Klearchus, Timæus (Athenæ. xii, 519-522). The best-authenticated
of all the examples of Sybaritic wealth, is the splendid figured
garment, fifteen cubits in length, which Alkimenês the Sybarite
dedicated as a votive offering in the temple of the Lakinian
Hêrê. Dionysius of Syracuse plundered that temple, got possession
of the garment, and is said to have sold it to the Carthaginians
for the price of one hundred and twenty talents: Polemon, the
Periegetes, seems to have seen it at Carthage (Aristot. Mirab.
Ausc. 96; Athenæ. xii, 541). Whether the price be correctly
stated, we are not in a situation to determine.
Making allowance, however, for exaggeration on all these accounts,
there can be no reason to doubt that Sybaris, in 560 B. C., was one
of the most wealthy, populous, and powerful cities of the Hellenic
name; and that it also presented both comfortable abundance among
the mass of the citizens, arising from the easy attainment of
fresh lots of fertile land, and excessive indulgences among the
rich,—to a degree forming marked contrast with Hellas proper, of
which Herodotus characterized poverty as the foster-sister.[753] The
extraordinary productiveness of the neighboring territory,—alleged
by Varro, in his time, when the culture must have been much worse
than it had been under the old Sybaris, to yield an ordinary crop
of a hundred-fold,[754] and extolled by modern travellers, even in
its present yet more neglected culture,—has been already touched
upon. The river Krathis,—still the most considerable river of that
region,—at a time when there was an industrious population to keep
its water-course in order, would enable the extensive fields of
Sybaris to supply abundant nourishment for a population larger
perhaps than any other Grecian city could parallel. But though nature
was thus bountiful, industry, good management, and well-ordered
government were required to turn her bounty to account: where
these are wanting, later experience of the same territory shows
that its inexhaustible capacities may exist in vain. That luxury,
which Grecian moralists denounced in the leading Sybarites, between
560 and 510 B. C., was the result of acquisitions vigorously and
industriously pushed, and kept together by an orderly central force,
during a century and a half that the colony had existed. Though the
Trœzenian settlers who formed a portion of the original emigrants
had been expelled when the Achæans became more numerous, yet we are
told that, on the whole, Sybaris was liberal in the reception of
new emigrants to the citizenship,[755] and that this was one of the
causes of its remarkable advance. Of these additional comers, we may
presume that many went to form its colonies on the Mediterranean sea,
and some to settle both among its four dependent inland nations,
and its twenty-five subject towns. Five thousand horsemen, we are
told, clothed in showy attire, formed the processional march in
certain Sybaritic festivals,—a number which is best appreciated by
comparison with the fact, that the knights or horsemen of Athens, in
her best days, did not exceed twelve hundred. The Sybaritic horses,
if we are to believe a story purporting to come from Aristotle,
were taught to move at the sound of the flute; and the garments of
these wealthy citizens were composed of the finest wool from Milêtus
in Ionia,[756]—the Tarentine wool not having then acquired the
distinguished renown which it possessed five centuries afterwards
towards the close of the Roman republic. Next to the great abundance
of home produce,—corn, wine, oil, flax, cattle, fish, timber,
etc.,—the fact next in importance which we hear respecting Sybaris
is, the great traffic carried on with Milêtus: these two cities
were more intimately and affectionately connected together than
any two Hellenic cities within the knowledge of Herodotus.[757]
The tie between Tarentum and Knidus was also of a very intimate
character,[758] so that the great intercourse, personal as well as
commercial, between the Asiatic and the Italic Greeks, appears as a
marked fact in the history of the sixth century before the Christian
era.
[753] Herodot. vii, 102. τῇ Ἑλλάδι πενίη μὲν αἰεί κοτε σύντροφός
ἐστι.
[754] Varro, De Re Rusticâ, i, 44. “In Sybaritano dicunt etiam
cum centesimo redire solitum.” The land of the Italian Greeks
stands first for wheaten bread and beef; that of Syracuse for
pork and cheese (Hermippus ap. Athenæ. i, p. 27): about the
excellent wheat of Italy, compare Sophoklês, Triptolem. Fragm.
529, ed. Dindorf.
Theophrastus dwells upon the excellence of the land near Mylæ, in
the territory of the Sicilian Messênê, which produced, according
to him, thirty-fold. (Hist. Plant. ix, 2, 8, p. 259, ed.
Schneid.) This affords some measure of comparison, both for the
real excellence of the ancient Sybaritan territory, and for the
estimation in which it was held; its estimated produce being more
than three times that of Mylæ.
See in Mr. Keppel Craven’s Tour in the Southern Provinces of
Naples (chapters xi, xii, pp. 212-218), the description of the
rich and productive plain of the Krathis (in the midst of which
stood the ancient Sybaris), extending about sixteen miles from
Cassano to Corigliano, and about twelve miles from the former
town to the sea. Compare, also, the picture of the same country,
in the work by a French officer, referred to in a previous note,
“Calabria during a Military Residence of three years,” London,
1832, Letter xxii, pp. 219-226.
Hekatæus (c. 39, ed. Klausen) calls Cosa,—Κόσσα, πόλις Οἰνωτρῶν
ἐν μεσογαίᾳ. Cosa is considered to be identical, seemingly
on good grounds, with the modern Cassano (Cæsar, Bell. Civ.
iii, 22): assuming this to be correct, there must have been an
Œnotrian dependent town within eight miles of the ancient city of
Sybaris.
[755] Diodor xii, 9.
[756] Athenæus, xii, p. 519.
[757] Herodot. vi, 21. Respecting the great abundance of
ship-timber in the territory of the Italiots (Italian Greeks),
see Thucyd. vi, 90; vii, 25.
The pitch from the pine forests in the Sila was also abundant and
celebrated (Strabo, vi, p. 261).
[758] Herodot. iii, 138.
In this respect, as well as in several others, the Hellenic world
wears a very different aspect in 560 B. C. from that which it assumed
a century afterwards, and in which it is best known to modern
readers. At the former period, the Ionic and Italic Greeks are the
great ornaments of the Hellenic name, and carried on a more lucrative
trade with each other, than either of them maintained with Greece
proper; which both of them recognized as their mother-country, though
without admitting anything in the nature of established headship.
The military power of Sparta is indeed at this time great and
preponderant in Peloponnesus, but she has no navy, and she is only
just essaying her strength, not without reluctance, in ultramarine
interference. After the lapse of a century, these circumstances
change materially. The independence of the Asiatic Greeks is
destroyed, and the power of the Italic Greeks is greatly broken;
while Sparta and Athens not only become the prominent and leading
Hellenic states, but constitute themselves centres of action for the
lesser cities, to a degree previously unknown.
It was during the height of their prosperity, seemingly, in the
sixth century B. C., that the Italian Greeks either acquired for,
or bestowed upon, their territory the appellation of Magna Græcia,
which at that time it well deserved; for not only were Sybaris and
Krotôn then the greatest Grecian cities situated near together, but
the whole peninsula of Calabria may be considered as attached to
the Grecian cities on the coast. The native Œnotrians and Sikels
occupying the interior had become Hellenized, or semi-Hellenized,
with a mixture of Greeks among them,—common subjects of these great
cities; so that the whole extent of the Calabrian peninsula, within
the line which joins Sybaris with Poseidonia, might then be fairly
considered as Hellenic territory. Sybaris maintained much traffic
with the Tuscan towns in the Mediterranean, and the communication
between Greece and Rome, across the Calabrian isthmus,[759] may
perhaps have been easier during the time of the Roman kings—whose
expulsion was nearly contemporaneous with the ruin of Sybaris—than
it became during the first two centuries of the Roman republic. But
all these relations underwent a complete change after the breaking
up of the power of Sybaris in 510 B. C., and the gradual march of
the Oscan population from middle Italy towards the south. Cumæ was
overwhelmed by the Samnites, Poseidonia by the Lucanians; who became
possessed not only of these maritime cities, but also of the whole
inland territory—now called the Basilicata, with part of the hither
Calabria—across from Poseidonia to the neighborhood of the gulf of
Tarentum: while the Bruttians,—a mixture of outlying Lucanians with
the Greco-Œnotrian population once subject to Sybaris, speaking both
Greek and Oscan,[760]—became masters of the inland mountains in the
farther Calabria, from Consentia nearly to the Sicilian strait. It
was thus that the ruin of Sybaris, combined with the spread of the
Lucanians and Bruttians, deprived the Italian Greeks of that inland
territory which they had enjoyed in the sixth century B. C., and
restricted them to the neighborhood of the coast. To understand the
extraordinary power and prosperity of Sybaris and Krotôn, in the
sixth century B. C., when the whole of this inland territory was
subject to them, and before the rise of the Lucanians, and Bruttians,
and when the name Magna Græcia was first given, it is necessary to
glance by contrast at these latter periods; more especially since the
name still continued to be applied by the Romans to Italian Greece
after the contraction of territory had rendered it less appropriate.
[759] Athenæus, xii, p. 519.
[760] Festus, v. bilingues Brutates.
Of Krotôn at this early period of its power and prosperity we know
even less than of Sybaris. It stood distinguished both for the number
of its citizens who received prizes at the Olympic games, and for
the excellence of its surgeons or physicians. And what may seem
more surprising, if we consider the extreme present insalubrity of
the site upon which it stood, it was in ancient times proverbially
healthy,[761] which was not so much the case with the more fertile
Sybaris. Respecting all these cities of Italian Greeks, the same
remark is applicable as was before made in reference to the Sicilian
Greeks,—that the intermixture of the native population sensibly
affected both their character and habits. We have no information
respecting their government during this early period of prosperity,
except that we find mention at Krotôn, as at the Epizephyrian Lokri,
of a senate of one thousand members, yet not excluding occasionally
the ekklesia, or general assembly.[762] Probably, the steady increase
of their dominion in the interior, and the facility of providing
maintenance for new population, tended much to make their political
systems, whatever they may have been, work in a satisfactory manner.
The attempt of Pythagoras and his followers to constitute themselves
a ruling faction as well as a philosophical sect, will be recounted
in a subsequent chapter. The proceedings connected with that attempt
will show that there was considerable analogy and sympathy between
the various cities of Italian Greece, so as to render them liable
to be acted on by the same causes. But though the festivals of the
Lakinian Hêrê, administered by the Krotoniates, formed from early
times a common point of religious assemblage to all,[763]—yet the
attempts to institute periodical meetings of deputies, for the
express purpose of maintaining political harmony, did not begin
until after the destruction of Sybaris, nor were they ever more than
partially successful.
[761] Strabo, vi, p. 262.
[762] Jamblichus, Vit. Pythagor. c. 9, p. 33; c. 35, p. 210.
[763] Athenæus, xii, 541.
One other city, the most distant colony founded by Greeks in the
western regions, yet remains to be mentioned; and we can do no more
than mention it, since we have no facts to make up its history.
Massalia, the modern Marseilles, was founded by the Ionic Phokæans
in the 45th Olympiad, about 597 B. C.,[764] at the time when Sybaris
and Krotôn were near the maximum of their power,—when the peninsula
of Calabria was all Hellenic, and when Cumæ also had not yet been
visited by those calamities which brought about its decline. So much
Hellenism in the south of Italy doubtless facilitated the western
progress of the adventurous Phokæan mariner. It would appear that
Massalia was founded by amicable fusion of Phokæan colonists with
the indigenous Gauls, if we may judge by the romantic legend of
the Protiadæ, a Massaliotic family or gens existing in the time of
Aristotle. Euxenus, a Phokæan merchant, had contracted friendly
relations with Nanus, a native chief in the south of Gaul, and was
invited to the festival in which the latter was about to celebrate
the marriage of his daughter Petta. According to the custom of
the country, the maiden was to choose for herself a husband among
the guests, by presenting him with a cup: through accident, or by
preference, Petta presented it to Euxenus, and became his wife.
Prôtis of Massalia, the offspring of this marriage, was the primitive
ancestor and eponym of the Protiadæ. According to another story
respecting the origin of the same gens, Protis was himself the
Phokæan leader who married Gyptis, daughter of Nannus king of the
Segobrigian Gauls.[765]
[764] This date depends upon Timæus (as quoted by Skymnus Chius,
210) and Solinus; there seems no reason for distrusting it,
though Thucydidês (i, 13) and Isokratês (Archidamus, p. 316)
seem to conceive Massalia as founded by the Phokæans about 60
years later, when Ionia was conquered by Harpagus (see Bruckner,
Historia Reip. Massiliensium, sect. 2, p. 9, Raoul Rochette,
Histoire des Colonies Grecques, vol. iii, pp. 405-413, who,
however, puts the arrival of the Phokæans, in these regions and
at Tartêssus much too early).
[765] Aristotle, Μασσαλιώτων πολιτεῖα, ap. Athenæum, xiii, p.
576; Justin, xliii, 3. Plutarch (Solon, c. 2) seems to follow the
same story as Justin.
Of the history of Massalia we know nothing, nor does it appear to
have been connected with the general movement of the Grecian world.
We learn generally that the Massaliots administered their affairs
with discretion as well as with unanimity, and exhibited in their
private habits an exemplary modesty,—that although preserving
alliance with the people of the interior, they were scrupulously
vigilant in guarding their city against surprise, permitting no
armed strangers to enter,—that they introduced the culture of vines
and olives, and gradually extended the Greek alphabet, language,
and civilization among the neighboring Gauls,—that they possessed
and fortified many positions along the coast of the gulf of Lyons,
and founded five colonies along the eastern coast of Spain,—that
their government was oligarchical, consisting of a perpetual senate
of six hundred persons, yet admitting occasionally new members from
without, and a small council of fifteen members,—that the Delphinian
Apollo and the Ephesian Artemis were their chief deities, planted
as guardians of their outlying posts, and transmitted to their
colonies.[766] Although it is common to represent a deliberate march
and steady supremacy of the governing few, with contented obedience
on the part of the many, as the characteristic of Dorian states,
and mutability not less than disturbance as the prevalent tendency
in Ionia,—yet there is no Grecian community to whom the former
attributes are more pointedly ascribed than the Ionic Massalia. The
commerce of the Massaliots appears to have been extensive, and their
armed maritime force sufficiently powerful to defend it against
the aggressions of Carthage,—their principal enemy in the western
Mediterranean.
[766] Strabo, iv, pp. 179-182: Justin, xliii, 4-5; Cicero, Pro
Flacco. 26. It rather appears from Aristotle (Polit. v, 5, 2; vi,
4-5), that the senate was originally a body completely close,
which gave rise to discontent on the part of wealthy men not
included in it: a mitigation took place by admitting into it,
occasionally, men selected from the latter.
Some authors seem to have accused the Massaliots of luxurious and
effeminate habits (see Athenæus, xii, p. 523).