Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/282

252 but they seem to have resembled their parent cities in the constant quarrels and wars which they waged with each other. Such combinations and leagues as were from time to time formed arose from the necessity of repelling common enemies—Lucani, Messapii, or Samnites. As in Greece, too, some one city possessed or claimed hegemony among the rest, in which it was opposed by some other which differed from it in origin, constitution, or habits. In early times this primacy seems to have been held by Sybaris—afterwards a bye word, perhaps unjustly, for wealth and luxury—whose rival was Croton. The people of Croton, an Achaean colony, prided themselves on a healthier and more manly way of life. They zealously practised athletics, won a great many prizes at Olympia, and rewarded those of their citizens who were victors with the highest honours and commands. In a war with Sybaris (about B.C. 510) they utterly destroyed that city. But they did not long enjoy the primacy they secured, for not many years later they sustained a crushing defeat at the hands of the people of Locri Epizypherii and Rhegium. In common with other towns of South Italy, they suffered much in the fifth century from a series of democratic revolutions brought on by popular risings against the followers of the philosopher Pythagoras, who settled in Croton about B.C. 530. His followers in after-years formed societies or clubs, which among other things supported oligarchical ideas. Nevertheless, when Dionysius of Syracuse crossed over to attack Magna Graecia (B.C. 389), Croton was the head of the league