6.

Rhegium2134 was founded by certain Chalcidenses, who, as they say, were decimated as an offering to Apollo in a time of scarcity, by order of an oracle, and afterwards removed hither from Delphi, taking with them certain others from home. As Antiochus says, the Zanclæans sent for the Chalcidenses, and appointed Antimnestus chief over them. Certain fugitives of the Messenians of Peloponnesus accompanied this colony, who had been compelled to fly by those who refused to give satisfaction to the Lacedæmonians for the violation2135 of the virgins at Limnæ, whom they had abused when attending the religious festival, and had slain those who assisted them. However when the fugitives had removed to Macistus, they sent to the oracle complaining against Apollo and Diana for suffering these things to happen notwithstanding they so greatly honoured them, and inquiring how the devoted might be saved. Apollo commanded to send them with the Chalcidenses to Rhegium, and to be grateful, therefore, to his sister Diana for that they were not lost but saved, as they should not be destroyed with their country, which would be annihilated shortly after by the Spartans.2136 They acted in accordance with the oracle, and thus it was that the rulers of the Rhegini were all of Messenian race until the time of Anaxilaus.

Antiochus asserts that anciently the whole of this district was inhabited by Sicilians and Morgetes; and that they [Pg 386]
[CAS. 258] afterwards passed into Sicily when they were expelled by the Œnotri. Some say that Morgantium2137 thus received its name from the Morgetes. But the city of the Rhegini became very powerful, and possessed many dependent settlements. It has always been a bulwark for us against the island [of Sicily], and, indeed, has recently served to that purpose when Sextus Pompeius alienated Sicily.2138 It was called Rhegium either, as Æschylus says, because of the convulsion which had taken place in this region; for Sicily was broken from the continent by earthquakes,

“Whence it is called Rhegium.”2139

Others,2140 as well as he, have affirmed the same thing, and adduce as an evidence that which is observed about Ætna, and the appearances seen in other parts of Sicily, the Lipari and neighbouring islands, and even in the Pithecussæ, with the whole coast beyond them, which prove that it was not unlikely that this convulsion had taken place. But now these mouths being opened, through which the fire is drawn up, and the ardent masses and water poured out, they say that the land in the neighbourhood of the Strait of Sicily rarely suffers from the effects of earthquakes; but formerly all the passages to the surface being blocked up, the fire which was smouldering beneath the earth, together with the vapour, occasioned terrible earthquakes, and the regions, being disturbed by the force of the pent-up winds, sometimes gave way, and being rent received the sea, which flowed in from either side; and thus were formed both this strait and the sea which surrounds the other islands in the neighbourhood. For Prochyta2141 and the Pithecussæ, as well as Capreæ, Leucosia, the Sirenes, and the Œnotrides, are but so many detached fragments from the continent, but other islands have risen from the bottom of the sea, a circumstance which frequently occurs in many places; for it is more reasonable to think that the islands in the midst of the sea have been raised up from the bottom, and that those which lie off headlands and are separated merely by a strait were broken off from them. Still it is beside our purpose to investigate thoroughly whether the name were given to the city for these causes, or whether it were named by the Samnites from the Latin word regium, which signifies royal, on account of its importance,2142 for their chieftains participated in the privileges of citizenship with the Romans, and generally used the Latin language. But Dionysius (the elder), having been treated with contempt by them, destroyed the illustrious city which had founded many towns and produced many distinguished characters, whether statesmen or men of letters,2143 for when he sought a consort from their city, they offered him the hangman’s daughter;2144 but his son (Dionysius the younger) partly restored it,2145 and called it Phœbia. During the war with Pyrrhus, a body of Campanians destroyed most of the citizens against the faith of treaties,2146 and a little [Pg 388]
[CAS. 259] before the Marsic or social war, earthquakes destroyed most of the towns;2147 but after Augustus Cæsar had driven Sextus Pompeius out of Sicily, when he saw that the city was deficient of inhabitants, he appointed certain of those who accompanied the expedition to reside there, and it is now tolerably well peopled.2148