Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/395

PRIMITIVE COLONISTS OF LOKRI. 37U affirmed that the foundation of Kroton was aided by Archias, then passing along the coast with his settlers for Syracuse, who is also brought into conjunction in a similar manner with the foundation of Lokri : but neither of these statements appears chronologically admissible. The Italian Lokri (called Epizephyrian, from the neighborhood of cape Zephyrium) was founded in the year 683 B. c. by settlers from the Lokrians, either the Ozolian Lokrians in the Krissajan gulf, or those of Opus on the Eubocan strait. This point was disputed even in antiquity, and perhaps both the one and the other may have contributed : Euanthus was the cek- ist of the place. 1 The first years of the Epizephyrian Lokri are said to have been years of sedition and discord. And the vile character which we hear ascribed to the primitive colonists, as well as their perfidious dealing with the natives, are the more to be noted, as the Lokrians, of the times both of Aristotle and of Polybius, fully believed these statements in regard to their own ancestors. The original emigrants to Lokri were, according to Aristotle, a body of runaway slaves, men-stealers, and adulterers, whose only legitimate connection with an honorable Hellenic root arose from a certain number of well-born Lokrian women who accompanied them. These women belonged to those select families called the Hundred Houses, who constituted what may be called the no- bility of the Lokrians in Greece proper, and their descendants continued to enjoy a certain rank and preeminence in the colony, even in the time of Polybius. The emigration is said to have been occasioned by disorderly intercourse between these noble Lokrian women and their slaves, perhaps by intermarriage with persons of inferior station, where there had existed no re- title is analogous to that of 'A-oP.Acjy Oi/a'or^c /cat AwwanV^f at JEgina (PythaenGtus ap. Schol. Pindar. Xcm. v, 81 ). There were various legends respecting Herakles, the Eponymus Kroton, and Lakinius. Hcraklcides Ponticus, Fragm. 30, ed. Koller; Diodor. iv, 24; Ovid, Mctamorph. xv, 1-53. 1 Strabo, vi, p. 259. Euantheia, Hyantheia, or (Eantheia, was one of the towns of the Ozolian Lokrians on the north side of the Krissa?nn gulf, from which, perhaps, the emigrants may have departed, carrying with them the name and patronage of its eponymous cekist (Plutarch, Quiest. Grace, c. 5; Skylax, p. 14).