Chapter XXII (2)

At the time when Theoklês landed on the hill near Naxos, and Archias in the islet of Ortygia, and when each of them expelled the Sikels from that particular spot, there were Sikel villages or little communities spread through all the neighboring country. By the gradual encroachments of the colony, some of these might be dispossessed and driven out of the plains near the coast into the more mountainous regions of the interior, but many of them doubtless found it convenient to submit, to surrender a portion of their lands, and to hold the rest as subordinate villagers of an Hellenic city-community:[697] and we find even at the time of the Athenian invasion (414 B. C.) villages existing in distinct identity as Sikels, yet subject and tributary to Syracuse. Moreover, the influence which the Greeks exercised, though in the first instance essentially compulsory, became also in part self-operating,—the ascendency of a higher over a lower civilization. It was the working of concentrated townsmen, safe among one another by their walls and by mutual confidence, and surrounded by more or less of ornament, public as well as private,—upon dispersed, unprotected, artless villagers, who could not be insensible to the charm of that superior intellect, imagination, and organization, which wrought so powerfully upon the whole contemporaneous world. To understand the action of these superior emigrants upon the native but inferior Sikels, during those three earliest centuries (730-430 B. C.) which followed the arrival of Archias and Theoklês, we have only to study the continuance of the same action during the three succeeding centuries which preceded the age of Cicero. At the period when Athens undertook the siege of Syracuse (B. C. 415), the interior of the island was occupied by Sikel and Sikan communities, autonomous, and retaining their native customs and language;[698] but in the time of Verres and Cicero (three centuries and a half afterwards) the interior of the island, as well as the maritime regions had become Hellenized: the towns in the interior were then hardly less Greek than those on the coast. Cicero contrasts favorably the character of the Sicilians with that of the Greeks generally (_i. e._ the Greeks out of Sicily), but he nowhere distinguishes Greeks in Sicily from native Sikels;[699] nor Enna and Centuripi from Katana and Agrigentum. The little Sikel villages became gradually semi-Hellenized and merged into subjects of a Grecian town during the first three centuries, this change took place in the regions of the coast,—during the following three centuries, in the regions of the interior; and probably with greater rapidity and effect in the earlier period, not only because the action of the Grecian communities was then closer, more concentrated, and more compulsory, but because also the obstinate tribes could then retire into the interior.

[697] Thucyd. vi, 88.

[698] Thucyd. vi, 62-87; vii, 13.

[699] Cicero in Verrem, Act. ii, lib. iv, c. 26-51; Diodor. v. 6.

Contrast the manner in which Cicero speaks of Agyrium, Centuripi,
and Enna, with the description of these places as inhabited by
autonomous Sikels, B. C. 396, in the wars of the elder Dionysius
(Diodor. xiv, 55, 58, 78). Both Sikans and Sikels were at that
time completely distinguished from the Greeks, in the centre of
the island.

O. Müller states that “Syracuse, seventy years after its
foundation, colonized Akræ, also Enna, situated in the centre
of the island,” (Hist. of Dorians, i, 6, 7). Enna is mentioned
by Stephanus Byz. as a Syracusan foundation, but without notice
of the date of its foundation, which must have been much later
than Müller here affirms. Serra di Falco (Antichità di Sicilia,
Introd. t. i, p. 9) gives Enna as having been founded later
than Akræ, but earlier than Kasmenæ: for which date I find no
authority. Talaria (see Steph. Byz. _ad voc._) is also mentioned
as another Syracusan city, of which we do not know either the
date or the particulars of foundation.

The Greeks in Sicily are thus not to be considered as purely Greeks, but as modified by a mixture of Sikel and Sikan language, customs, and character. Each town included in its non-privileged population a number of semi-Hellenized Sikels (or Sikans, as the case might be), who, though in a state of dependence, contributed to mix the breed and influence the entire mass. We have no reason to suppose that the Sikel or Œnotrian language ever became written, like Latin, Oscan, or Umbrian:[700] the inscriptions of Segesta and Halesus are all in Doric Greek, which supplanted the native tongue for public purposes as a separate language, but not without becoming itself modified in the confluence. In following the ever-renewed succession of violent political changes, the inferior capacity of regulated and pacific popular government, and the more unrestrained and voluptuous license, which the Sicilian and Italian Greeks[701] exhibit as compared with Athens and the cities of Greece proper,—we must call to mind that we are not dealing with pure Hellenism; and that the native element, though not unfavorable to activity or increase of wealth, prevented the Grecian colonist from partaking fully in that improved organization which we so distinctly trace in Athens from Solon downwards. How much the taste, habits, ideas, religion, and local mythes, of the native Sikels passed into the minds of the Sikeliots or Sicilian Greeks, is shown by the character of their literature and poetry. Sicily was the native country of that rustic mirth and village buffoonery which gave birth to the primitive comedy,—politicized and altered at Athens so as to suit men of the market-place, the ekklesia, and the dikastery,—blending, in the comedies of the Syracusan Epicharmus, copious details about the indulgences of the table (for which the ancient Sicilians were renowned) with Pythagorean philosophy and moral maxims,—but given with all the naked simplicity of common life, in a sort of rhythmical prose, without even the restraint of a fixed metre, by the Syracusan Sophrôn in his lost Mimes, and afterwards polished as well as idealized in the Bucolic poetry of Theokritus.[702] That which is commonly termed the Doric comedy was in great part at least, the Sikel comedy taken up by Dorian composers,—the Doric race and dialect being decidedly predominant in Sicily: the manners thus dramatized belonged to that coarser vein of humor which the Doric Greeks of the town had in common with the semi-Hellenized Sikels of the circumjacent villages. Moreover, it seems probable that this rustic population enabled the despots of the Greco-Sicilian towns to form easily and cheaply those bodies of mercenary troops, by whom their power was sustained,[703] and whose presence rendered the continuance of popular government, even supposing it begun, all but impossible.

[700] Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, sect. 1, p. 3.

[701] Plato, Epistol. vii, p. 326; Plautus, Rudens, Act i, Sc. 1,
56; Act ii. Sc. 6, 58.

[702] Timokreon, Fragment. 5 ap. Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, p.
478,—Σικελὸς κομψὸς ἀνὴρ Ποτὶ τὰν ματέρ᾽ ἔφα.

Bernhardy, Grundriss der Geschichte der Griech. Litteratur, vol.
ii, ch. 120, sects. 2-5; Grysar, De Doriensium Comœdia, Cologne,
1828, ch. i, pp. 41, 55, 57, 210; Boeckh, De Græcæ Tragœd.
Princip. p. 52; Aristot. ap. Athenæ. xi, 505. The κότταβος seems
to have been a native Sikel fashion, borrowed by the Greeks
(Athenæus, xv, pp. 666-668).

The Sicilian βουκολιασμὸς was a fashion among the Sicilian
herdsmen earlier than Epicharmus, who noticed the alleged
inventor of it, Diomus, the βούκολος Σικελιώτης (Athenæ. xiv, p.
619). The rustic manners and speech represented in the Sicilian
comedy are contrasted with the town manners and speech of the
Attic comedy, by Plautus, Persæ. Act. iii. Sc. 1, v, 31:—

“Librorum eccillum habeo plenum soracum.
Dabuntur dotis tibi inde sexcenti logi,
Atque Attici omnes, nullum Siculum acceperis.”

Compare the beginning of the prologue to the Menæchmi of Plautus.

The comic μῦθος began at Syracuse with Epicharmus and Phormis
(Aristot. Poet, v, 5).

[703] Zenobius, Proverb. v, 84.—Σικελὸς στρατιώτης.

It was the destiny of most of the Grecian colonial establishments to perish by the growth and aggression of those inland powers upon whose coast they were planted,—powers which gradually acquired, from the vicinity of the Greeks, a military and political organization, and a power of concentrated action, such as they had not originally possessed. But in Sicily, the Sikels were not numerous enough even to maintain permanently their own nationality, and were ultimately penetrated on all sides by Hellenic ascendency and manners. We shall, nevertheless, come to one remarkable attempt, made by a native Sikel prince in the 82d Olympiad (455 B. C.),—the enterprising Duketius,—to group many petty Sikel villages into one considerable town, and thus to raise his countrymen into the Grecian stage of polity and organization. Had there been any Sikel prince endowed with these superior ideas at the time when the Greeks first settled in Sicily, the subsequent history of the island would probably have been very different; but Duketius had derived his projects from the spectacle of the Grecian towns around him, and these latter had acquired much too great power to permit him to succeed. The description of his abortive attempt, however, which we find in Diodorus,[704] meagre as it is, forms an interesting point in the history of the island.

[704] Diodor. xi, 90-91; xii, 9.

Grecian colonization in Italy began nearly at the same time as in Sicily, and was marked by the same general circumstances. Placing ourselves at Rhegium (now Reggio) on the Sicilian strait, we trace Greek cities gradually planted on various points of the coast as far as Cumæ on the one sea, and Tarentum (Taranto) on the other. Between the two seas runs the lofty chain of the Apennines, calcareous in the upper part of its course, throughout middle Italy,—granitic and schistose in the lower part, where it traverses the territories now called the hither and the farther Calabria. The plains and valleys on each side of the Calabrian Apennines exhibit a luxuriance of vegetation extolled by all observers, and surpassing even that of Sicily;[705] and great as the productive powers of this territory are now, there is full reason for believing that they must have been far greater in ancient times. For it has been visited by repeated earthquakes, each of which has left calamitous marks of devastation: those of 1638 and 1783—especially the latter, whose destructive effects were on a terrific scale, both as to life and property[706]—are of a date sufficiently recent to admit of recording and measuring the damage done by each; and that damage, in many parts of the south-western coast, was great and irreparable. Animated as the epithets are, therefore, with which the modern traveller paints the present fertility of Calabria, we are warranted in enlarging their meaning when we conceive the country as it stood between 720-320 B. C., the period of Grecian occupation and independence; while the unhealthy air, which now desolates the plains generally, seems then to have been felt only to a limited extent, and over particular localities. The founders of Tarentum, Sybaris, Krotôn, Lokri, and Rhegium, planted themselves in situations of unexampled promise to the industrious cultivator, which the previous inhabitants had turned to little account: since the subjugation of the Grecian cities, these once rich possessions have sunk into poverty and depopulation, especially during the last three centuries, from insalubrity, indolence, bad administration, and fear of the Barbary corsairs.

[705] See Dolomieu, Dissertation on the Earthquakes of Calabria
Ultra, in 1783, in Pinkerton, Collection of Voyages and Travels,
vol. v, p. 280.

“It is impossible (he observes) to form an adequate idea of the
fertility of Calabria Ultra, particularly of that part called
the Plain (south-west of the Apennines, below the gulf of St.
Eufemia). The fields, productive of olive-trees of larger growth
than any seen elsewhere, are yet productive of grain. Vines
load with their branches the trees on which they grow, yet
lessen not their crops. All things grow there, and nature seems
to anticipate the wishes of the husbandman. There is never a
sufficiency of hands to gather the whole of the olives, which
finally fall and rot at the bottom of the trees that bore them,
in the months of February and March. Crowds of foreigners,
principally Sicilians, come there to help to gather them, and
share the produce with the grower. Oil is their chief article of
exportation: in every quarter their wines are good and precious.”
Compare pp. 278-282.

[706] Mr. Keppel Craven observes (Tour through the Southern
Provinces of Naples, ch. xiii, p. 254), “The earthquake of 1783
may be said to have altered the face of the whole of Calabria
Ultra, and extended its ravages as far northward as Cosenza.”

The Œnotrians, Sikels, or Italians, who were in possession of 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.