Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/409

 B. vi. c. i. 13. ITALY. THE BRUTTII. GRECIAN CITIES. 395 discipline and athletic exercises to a great extent, and in one of the Olympic games all the seven wrestlers, who obtained the palm in the stadium, were Crotoniatae ; whence, it seems, the saying arose that the last wrestler of Crotona was the first of the other Greeks, and hence they say also is the origin of the expression, " more salubrious than Crotona," as instancing a place which had something to show, in the number of wrest- lers which it produced, as a proof of its salubrity and the ro- bust frame of body which it was capable of rearing. Thus it had many victors in the Olympic games, although it cannot be reckoned to have been long inhabited on account of the vast destruction of its citizens, who fell at the battle of the Sagras. Its celebrity too was not a little spread by the num- ber of Pythagoreans who resided there, and Milo, 1 who was the most renowned of wrestlers, and lived in terms of intimacy with Pythagoras, who abode long in this city. They relate that at a banquet of the philosophers, when one of the pillars in the hall gave way, Milo sustained the ceiling while they all escaped, and afterwards saved himself. It is likely that, trusting to the same strength, he met his fate as related by some, for whilst making his way through a thick wood, he strayed considerably out of the path, when finding a great log with wedges in it, he thrust both his hands and feet into the fissure, intending to split it completely, but was only able to force it enough to let the wedges fall out, when the gaping log presently closed on him, and he, being taken as in a snare, was devoured by wild beasts. 13. Beyond this, at the distance of 200 stadia, is situated Sybaris, 2 a colony settled by the Achseans, between the two " Vixque pererratis quao spectant littora terris, Invenit ^Esarei fatalia fluminis ora : Nee procul hinc tumulum, sub quo sacrata Crotonis Ossa tegebat humus. Jussaque ibi moenia terra Condidit ; et nomen tumulati traxit in urbem." Ovid. Metam. xv. 53. 1 Milo is said to have carried off the prize for wrestling from the G2nd Olympiad, B. c. 532, and also to have commanded the 100,000 Crotoniatae who engaged the hostile armies of Sybaris and destroyed their city, about B. c. 509. Diod. Sic. xii. 9, &c. 2 Sybaris was said to have been founded by the people of Troczene not long after the siege of Troy. Aristot. Politic, lib. v. cap. 3. Solin. viii. But these were subsequently joined by a more numerous colony of Achae- ans, about B. c. 720. Euseb. Chron. ii.