Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/399

 RHEGIUM. 382 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. The date of Ilhegium (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 ];. 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 50(V 470 B. c., who traced his descent through two centuries to a Messenian emigrant named Alkidaniidas. 1 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 witl' come 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, Zankle, Xaxos, Katana, and Leontini. The original emigrants departed from Chalkis, as a tenth of the citizens consecrated by vow to Apollo in consequenco of famine ; and the directions of the god, as well as the invita- tion of the Zanklrcans, guided their course to Rhegium. The dependent villages around, 2 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 here- after recounted. 1 Sirabo, vi, p. 257 ; Pnusan. iv, 23, 2. 1 Strabo, ri, p. 258. ta^t'cre <5e #uAiora rj run 'Pqycvuv 7ro^,tf, /ca daf to-.ve avvuf, etc.
 * ".wn was flourishing, and acquired a considerable number of