384 HISTORY OF GREECE- Between Lokri and the Lakinian cape were situated the Aclue- an colony of Kaulonia, and Skylletium ; the latter seemingly in- cluded in the domain of Kroton, though pretending to have been originally founded by Menestheus, the leader of the Athenians at the siege of Troy : Petilia, also, a hill-fortress north-west of the Lakinian cape, as well as Makalla, both comprised in the territory of Kroton, were affirmed to have been founded by Philoktetes. Along all this coast oi the gulf of Tarentum, there were various establishments ascribed to the heroes of the Trojan war, J Epeius, Philoktetes, Nestor, or to their returning troops. Of these establishments, probably the occupants had been small, miscellaneous, unacknowledged bands of Grecian adventurers, 2 who assumed to themselves the most honorable origin which they could imagine, and who became afterwards absorbed into the larger colonial establishments which followed ; the latter adopt- ing and taking upon themselves the heroic worship of Philok- tetes or other warriors from Troy, which the prior emigrants had begun. During the flourishing times of Sybaris and Kroton, it seems that these two great cities divided the whole length of the coast of the Tarentine gulf, from the spot now called Rocca Imperiale down to the south of the Lakinian cape. Between the point where the dominion of Sybaris terminated on the Tarentine side, and Tarentum itself, there were two considerable Grecian settle- ments, Siris, afterwards called Herakleia, and Metapontium. The fertility and attraction of the territory of Siris, with its two rivers, Akiris and Siris, were well known even to the poet Ar- chilochus 3 (GOO u. c.), but we do not know the date at which it passed from the indigenous Chonians or Chaonians into the hands of Greek settlers. A citizen of Siris is mentioned among the suitors for the daughter of the Sikyonian Kleisthenes, (580- 560 B. c.) We are told that some Kolophonian fugitives, emi- grating to escape the dominion of the Lydian kings, attacked 1 Strabo, vi. p. 263 ; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 106 ; Athenae. xii, p. 523. It is to these reputed Rhodian companions of Tlepolemus before Troy, that Ihe allusion in Strabo refers, to Ilhodian occupants near Sybaris (xiv, p. 655).
- See Manncrt, Geographic, part ix, b. 9, ch. 11, p. 234.
3 Archiloch. 1'ragin 1 7, ed. Schncidcwin.
