Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/353

 MKSSANA. calls it a very great and very rich city (" eivitas maxima et locupletissima," Verr. v. 17), and extols the advantagefi of its situation, its port, and its buildings. {lb. iv. 2.) Like all other allied cities, it had its own senate and masjistrates, and was legally subject to no other contributions tluin the furnishing ships and naval supplies in case of war, and the contributing a certain proportion of the corn furnished by Sicily to Home at a given rate of re- muneration, (lb. V. 17 — 22.) Nor does Messana appear to have suffered severely from any of the wars that caused such ravages in Sicily, though it nar- rowly escaped being taken and plundered by Athenion during the Servile War, b. c. 101. (Dion Cass. Fr. Val. p. 534.) In the Civil War, b. c. 48, it was the station of a part of the fleet of Caesar, which was attacked there by that of Pompey under Cassius, and the whole of the ships, thirty-five in number, burnt; but the city itself was protected by the presence of a Roman legion. (Caes. B. C. iii. 101.) At a somewhat later period it was the head-quarters and chief stronghold of Sextus Pompeius during his war with Octavian, b. c. 36; and its capacious har- bour became the station of the fleet with which he commanded the coasts of Sicily, as far as Tau- romenium on the one side and Tyndaris on the other. It was from thence also that Pompeius, after the total defeat of his fleet by Agrippa, made his escape with a squadron of only seventeen ships. (Appian, B. C. v. 97, 10.3, 109, 122; Dion Cass. xlix. 1—12; Strab. vi. p. 268.) It was in all probability in consequence of this ■war that Messana lost the privileged condition it had so long enjoyed ; but its inhabitants received in ex- change the Roman franchise, and it was placed in the ordinary position of a Roman municipium. It still continued to be a flourishing place. Strabo speaks of it as one of the few cities in Sicily that were in his day well peopled ; and though no sub- sequent mention of it is found in history under the Roman Empire, it reappears during the Gothic wars as one of the chief cities and most important for- tresses in the island, — a rank it had undoubtedly held throughout the intervening period. (Strab. vi. p. 268 ; Plin. iii. 8. s. 14 ; Ptoh iii. 4. § 9 ; Mel. ii. 7. § 16 ; Procop. B. G. i. 8, iii. 39.) The wine of the neighbourhood of Jlessana, known as Vinum Mamei'tinum, enjoyed a great reputation in the days of Pliny; it was first brought into vogue by the dictator Caesar. (Plin. siv. 6. s. 8.) Throughout the vicissitudes of the middle ages Messina continued to be one of the most important cities of Sicily ; and still ranks as the second city in the island. It has, however, but few remains of antiquity. The only vestiges are some baths and tesselated pavements, and a small old church, sup- posed to have formed part of a Roman basilica. (Snjyth's Sicily, p. 118.) Another church, called S. Giovanni de' Fiorentini is believed, but wholly without authority, to occupy the site of the Sa- crarium or family chapel of Heius, from which Verres purloined a bronze statue of Hercules, attri- buted to Myron, and one of Cupid, which was be- lieved to be the work of Praxiteles. (Cic. Verr. iv. 2,3.) The celebrated port of Messana, to which the city owed its chief importance in ancient as well as modern times, is formed by a projecting spit or tongue of sand, which curves round in the form of a crescent or sickle (whence the name of Zancle was supposed to be derived), and constitutes a natural VOL. II. MESSANA. 337 mole, rendering the harbour within perfectly secure. This singular bulwark is called by Diodorus the Acth ('A/cTiij), and its construction was attributed by fable to the giant Orion (Diod. iv. 85), though there can be no doubt of its being of perfectly natural fonnation. The harbour within is said by Diodorus to be capable of containing a fleet of 600 ships (xiv. 56 ), and has abundant depth of w^ater, even for the largest ships of modern days. The celebrated whirlpool of the Charybdis is situated just outside the Acte, nearly opposite the modern lighthouse, but out of the track of ves.sels entering the harbour of Messina. (Smyth's Sicily, p. 123.) Though the city itself is built close to the harbour on level ground, immediately at the back of it rise steep hills, forming the underfalls of a range of mountains which extends from the neighbourhood of Cape Pelorus to that of Tauromenium. This ridge, or at least the part of it next to Cape Pelorus, was known in ancient times as the Mo3s"s Nepto- Nius ; but a part of the same range forming one of the underfalls near Messana is called, both by Dio- dorus and Polybius, the Chalcidic mount (jh Xa/ci- SiK^f 6^)os, Pol. i. 1 1 ; o <pos 6 KaXovfiivos Xa- KiSiKos, Diod. xxiii. 1), and was the position oc- cupied by Hieron of Syracuse when he laid siege to Messana, b. c. 264. But neither this, nor the posi- tion taken up by the Carthaginians at the same time at a place called Sunes or Eunes (^vueis, Pol.; Evveh, Diod.), can be identified with any degree of certainty. The coins of iIessana are numerous and interest- ing, as illustrating the historical vicissitudes of the city. There exist : — 1. Coins of Zancle, before the time of Anaxilas, with the name written in old characters AANKAE, a dialectic form of the name. 2. Coins of Messana, with the Ionic legend ME22ENION, and types taken from the coins of Samos. These must be referred to the period of Anaxilas imme- diately after his conquest of the city, while the Samian colonists still inhabited it. 3. Coins of Messana, with the type of a hare, which seems to have been adopted as the ordinary symbol of the city, because that animal is said to have been first introduced into Sicily by Anaxilas. (Pollux, Otiom. v. 75.) These coins, which are numerous, and range over a considerable period of time, show the gradual preponderance of the Doric element in the city ; the ruder and earlier ones having the legend in the Ionic form ME22ENION, the latter ones in the Doric COINS OF MESSANA.