CHAPTER VII

The Greeks in the West

I. THE SYBARITES

SKIRTING Sunium again, our ship of fancy, sailing westward, finds Cythera, island haunt of Aphrodite, and therefore the goal of Watteau’s Embarkation.* There, about A.D. 160, Pausanias saw “the most holy and ancient of all the temples that the Greeks have built to Aphrodite”;¹ and there, in 1887, Schliemann dug its ruins out of the earth.² Cythera was the southernmost of the Ionian Islands that bordered the west coast of Greece, and so named because Ionian immigrants settled them; Zacynthos, Cephallenia, Ithaca, Leucas, Paxos, and Corcyra made the rest. Schliemann thought that Ithaca was the island of Odysseus, and vainly sought under its soil some confirmation of Homer’s tale;³ but Dorpfeld believed that Odysseus’ home was on rocky Leucas. From the cliffs of Leucas, as an annual sacrifice to Apollo, the ancient Leucadians, says Strabo, were in the habit of hurling a human victim; but being men as well as theologians, they mercifully attached to him powerful birds whose wings might break his fall:⁴ probably the story of Sappho’s leap is bound up with memories of this rite. Corinthian colonists occupied Corcyra (Corfu) about 734 B.C., and soon became so strong that they defeated Corinth’s navy and established their independence. From Corcyra some Greek adventurers sailed up the Adriatic as far as Venice; some made small settlements on the Dalmatian coast and in the valley of the Po;⁵ others crossed at last through fifty miles of stormy water to the heel of Italy.

They found a magnificent shore line, curved into natural harbors and backed by a fertile hinterland that had been almost neglected by the aborigines.⁶ The Greek invaders took possession of this coastal region by the ruthless law of colonial expansion—that natural resources unexploited by the native population will draw in, by a kind of chemical attraction, some other people to exploit them and pour them into the commerce and usage of the world. From Brentesium (Brindisi) the newcomers, chiefly Dorian, traversed the heel of the peninsula to establish a major city at Taras—the Roman Tarentum (Taranto).* There they grew olives, raised horses, manufactured pottery, built ships, netted fish, and gathered mussels to make a purple dye more highly valued than the Phoenician.⁸ As in most of the Greek colonies, the government began as an oligarchy of landowners, passed under dictators financed by the middle class, and enjoyed vigorous and turbulent intervals of democracy. Here the romantic Pyrrhus would land, in 281B.C., and undertake to play Alexander to the West.

Across the Tarentine Gulf a new wave of immigrants, mostly Achaeans, founded the cities of Sybaris and Crotona. The murderous jealousy of these kindred states illustrates the creative energy and destructive passions of the Greeks. Trade between eastern Greece and western Italy had a choice of two routes, one by water, the other in part by land. Ships following the water route touched at Crotona, and exchanged many goods there; thence they passed to Rhegium, paid tolls, and moved cautiously through pirate-ridden seas and the swirling currents of the Messina Straits to Elea and Cumae—the northernmost Greek settlement in Italy. To avoid these tolls and perils, and a hundred extra miles of rowing and sailing, merchants who chose the other route unloaded their cargoes at Sybaris, carried them overland some thirty miles to the western coast at Laus, and reshipped them to Poseidonia, whence they were marketed into the interior of Italy.

Strategically situated on this line of trade, Sybaris prospered until it had (if we may believe Diodorus Siculus⁹) 300,000 population and such wealth as few Greek cities could match. Sybarite became a synonym for epicurean. All physical labor was performed by slaves or serfs while the citizens, dressed in costly robes, took their ease in luxurious homes and consumed exotic delicacies,† Men whose work was noisy, such as carpenters and smiths, were forbidden to practice their crafts within the confines of the city. Some of the roads in the richer districts were covered with awnings as a protection against heat and rain.¹¹ Alcisthenes of Sybaris, says Aristotle, had a robe of such precious stuffs that Dionysius I of Syracuse later sold it for 120 talents ($720,000).¹² Smyndyrides of Sybaris, visiting Sicyon to sue for the hand of Cleisthenes’ daughter, brought with him a thousand servants.¹³

All went well with Sybaris until it slipped into war with its neighbor Crotona (510). We are unreliably informed that the Sybarites marched out to battle with an army of 300,000 men¹⁵ The Crotoniates, we are further assured, threw this force into confusion by playing the tunes to which the Sybarites had taught their horses to dance.¹⁶ The horses danced, the Sybarites were slaughtered, and their city was so conscientiously sacked and burned that it disappeared from history in a day. When, sixty-five years later, Herodotus and other Athenians established near the site the new colony of Thurii, they found hardly a trace of what had been the proudest community in Greece.