Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/419

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B. VI. C. II. § 3.
SICILY.
405

city from them. The inhabitants generally are rather called Mamertini than Messenians. The district abounds in wine, which we do not call Messenian, but Mamertinian: it vies with the best produced in Italy.[1] The city is well peopled, but Catana is more populous, which has been colonized by the Romans.[2] Tauromenium is less populous than either. Catana was founded by people from Naxos, and Tauromenium by the Zanclæans of Hybla,[3] but Catana was deprived of its original inhabitants when Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, introduced others, and called it by the name of Ætna instead of Catana. It is of this that Pindar says he was the founder, when he sings,
“Thou understandest what I say, O father, that bearest the same name with the splendid holy sacrifices, thou founder of Ætna.”[4]

But on the death of Hiero,[y 1] the Catanæans returned and expelled the new inhabitants, and demolished the mausoleum of the tyrant. The Ætnæans, compelled to retire,[y 2] established themselves on a hilly district of Ætna, called Innesa,[5] and called the place Ætna. It is distant from Catana about 80 stadia. They still acknowledged Hiero as their founder.

Ætna lies the highest of any part of Catana, and participates the most in the inconveniences occasioned by the mouths of the volcano, for the streams of lava flowing down in Catanæa[6] pass through it first. It was here that Amphinomus

  1. ↑ These wines, although grown in Sicily, were reckoned among the Italian wines. See Athen. Deipnos. lib. i. cap. 21, ed. Schweigh. tom. i. p. 102. And from the time of Julius Cæsar they were classed in the fourth division of the most esteemed wines. See Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xiv. § 8, No. 4 and § 17.
  2. ↑ At the same time as Syracuse.
  3. ↑ A note in the French translation suggests that we should read Sicilians of Hybla. τῶν ἐν Ὕβλῃ Σικελῶν instead of Ζαγκλαίων.
  4. ↑ Hiero in Greek was Ἱέρων. The line of Pindar in Kramer’s edition is,
    ξύνες [ ὅ ] τοι λέγω, ζαθέων ἱερῶν ὁμώνυμε πάτερ,
    κτίστορ Αἴτνας.

    The words played on are Ἱέρων and ἱερῶν.
  5. ↑ Cluvier considers that the monastery of Saint Nicolas de Arenis, about 12 modern miles from Catana, is situated about the place to which Strabo here alludes.
  6. ↑ τὴν Καταναίαν. The spelling of this name, like very many in the present work, was by no means uniform in classic authors. Strabo has generally called it Catana (Κατάνη); Ptolemy, Κατάνη κολώνια; Pliny,
  1. ↑ This occurred in the year 468.
  2. ↑ About 461.
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