Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/410

 394 HISTORY OF GREECE. though a marked Doric, admitted many local peculiarities, ami the farces of the Tarentine poet Rhinthon, like the Syracusan Sophron, seem to have blended the Hellenic with the Italic in language as well as in character. About the year 5 GO B. c., the time of the accession of Peisis- tratus at Athens, the close of what may properly be called the first period of Grecian history, Sybaris and Kroton were at the maximum of their power, which each maintained for half a century afterwards, until the fatal dissension between them. We are told that the Sybarites, in that final contest, marched against Kro- ton with an army of three hundred thousand men : fabulous as this number doubtless is, we cannot doubt that, for an irruption of this kind into an adjoining territory, their large body of senii- Hellenized native subjects might be mustered in prodigious force. The few statements which have reached us respecting them touch, unfortunately, upon little more than their luxury, fantastic self-indulgence, and extravagant indolence, for which qualities they have become proverbial in modem times as well as in an- cient. Anecdotes illustrating these qualities were current, and served more than one purpose, in antiquity. The philosopher recounted them, in order to discredit and denounce the character which they exemplified, while among gay companies, " Syb- aritic tales," or tales respecting sayings and doing of ancient Syb- arites, formed a separate and special class of excellent stories, to be told simply for amusement, 1 with which view witty romancers driss der Romischen Litteratur, Abschnitt ii, pt. 2, pp. 185-186, about the analogy of these $hva.Kf of Rhinthon with the native Italic Mimes. The dialect of the other cities of Italic Greece is very little known : the ancient Inscription of Petilia is Doric : see Ahrens, De Dialecto Doric'i, sect. 49, p. 418. 1 Aristophan. Vesp. 12GO. AiauiriKov yeTiolov, TJ ZvfiapiriKov. What is meant by "Lvfiapiruibv ye/loan; is badly explained by the Scholiast, but is perfectly well illustrated by Aristophanes himself, in subsequent verses of the -me play (1427-1436). where Philokleon tells two good stories respecting " a Sybaritan man," and a " woman in Sybaris : " ' vrip Iivpup'iTT/t; t^sctv i; upfj.aTOf, etc. Iv Zvfiupd yvvri nore Kareaf ^ vov > e ' c - These 2v/3<ipm ^Ta^tfey/zara are as old as Epicharmus, whose mind wag much imbued with the Pythagorean philosophy. See Etymolog. Magn. Svpapifriv. JElian amused himself also with the iffTopuu "ZvpapiTiKot (V. H. xiv, 20) : compare Ilesychius, ZvftapiTiKol hoyot, and Suidas, 2o/3 1