Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/380

 531 HISTORY 01 GREECE. actcr, position, natfity, etc. of these primitiye emigrants, the foundej's of a city rhich we shall hereafter find comprising a vast walled circuit, which Strabo reckons at one hundred and eighty stadia, but which the modern observations of Colonel Leake announce as fourteen English miles, 1 or about one hundred and twenty-two stadia. We are told only that many of them came from the Corinthian village of Tenea, and that one of them sold to a comrade on the voyage his lot of land in prospective, for the price of a honey-cake : the little which we hear about the determining motive?, 2 of the colony refers to the personal charac- ter of the cekist. ^rchias son of Euagetus, one of the governing gens of the Bacchblae at Corinth, in the violent prosecution of unbridled lust, had caused, though unintentionally, the death of a free youth named Aktaeon, whose father Melissus, after having vainly endeavored to procure redress, slew himself at the Isth- mian games, invoking the vengeance of Poseidon against the aggressor. 3 Such were the destructive effects of this paternal curse, that Archias was compelled to expatriate, and the Bacchi- udze placed him at the head of the emigrants to Ortygia, in 734 B. c. : at that time, probably, this was a sentence of banishment to which no man of commanding station would submit except under the pressure of necessity. There yet remained room for new settlements between Naxos and Syracuse : and Theokles, the oekist of Naxos, found himself in a situation to occupy part of this space only five years after the foundation of Syracuse : perhaps he may have been joined by fresh settlers. He attacked and expelled the Sikels^ from the fertile spot called Leontini, seemingly about half-way down on the eastern coast between Mount JEtna and Syracuse ; and also from Katana, immediately adjoining to Mount JEtna, which Btill retains both its name and its importance. Two new Chalki- dic colonies were thus founded, Theokles himself becoming cekist of Leontini, and Euarchus chosen by the Katanaean settlers themselves, of Katana. 1 Sec Colonel Leakc, notes on the Topography of Syracuse, p. 41. 3 Diodor. Frag. Lit. viii, p. 24 ; Plutarch, Narrat Amator. p. 772 ; Schol Apollon. Ilhod. iv, 1212. 4 Polvaenus (v. 5, I) describes the stratagem of Theokles on this occasion
 * Athcnac. iv, 167 ; Strabo, ix, p. 380.