Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/418

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404
STRABO.
CASAUB. 267.

the tenth generation from the Trojan war. For those who preceded him were so terrified by the piratical customs of the Tyrrheni, and the ferocity of the savages of the neighbourhood, that they did not even venture to resort thither for the purposes of commerce. Theocles the Athenian, however, having been driven to Sicily by storms, observed both the weakness of the inhabitants and the excellence of the soil. On his return home, he was unable to persuade the Athenians to make any attempt, but he collected a numerous band of Chalcidians in Eubœa, with some Ionians and Dorians, whereof the most part were Megarenses, and sailed. The Chalcidians founded Naxos, and the Dorians Megara, which was at first called Hybla. These cities no longer exist, but the name of Hybla survives on account of the Hyblæan honey.

3. The first of the cities which at present remain on the aforesaid side is Messana, built at the head of the gulf of Pelorias, which is curved very considerably towards the east, and forms a bay. The passage across to Rhegium[p 1] is 60 stadia, but the distance to the Columna Rheginorum is much less. It was from a colony of the Messenians of the Peloponnesus that it was named Messana, having been originally called Zancle, on account of the great inequality of the coast (for anything irregular was termed ζάγκλιον).[1] It was originally founded by the people of Naxos near Catana. Afterwards the Mamertini, a tribe of Campanians, took possession of it.[y 1] The Romans, in the war in Sicily against the Carthaginians, used it as an arsenal.[y 2] Still more recently,[y 3] Sextus Pompeius assembled his fleet in it, to contend against Augustus Cæsar; and when he relinquished the island, he took ship from thence.[y 4] Charybdis[p 2] is pointed out at a short distance from the city in the Strait, an immense gulf, into which the back currents of the Strait frequently impel ships, carrying them down with a whirl and the violence of the eddy. When they are swallowed down and shattered, the wrecks are cast by the stream on the shore of Tauromenia,[p 3] which they call, on account of this kind of accumulation, the dunghill.[g 1] So greatly have the Mamertini prevailed over the Messenians, that they have by degrees wrested the

  1. ↑ Thucydides says ζάγκλιον is a Sicilian word.
  1. ↑ Reggio.
  2. ↑ Now called Garafalo.
  3. ↑ Taormina.
  1. ↑ B. C. 289.
  2. ↑ B. C. 264 to 243.
  3. ↑ B. C. 44.
  4. ↑ B. C. 36.
  1. ↑ κοπρία
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