Sybaris was a town of Lucania, situated on the banks of the Bay of Tarentum. It was founded by a colony of Achaians; and in process of time became very powerful.

The walls of this city extend six miles and a half in circumference, and the suburbs covered the banks of the Crathis for seven miles.

Historians and orators, of all ages, have been guilty of praising heroes. “For my own part,” says Mr. Swinburne, “I cannot help feeling pity for the hard fate of the Sybarites, to whom we are indebted for the discovery of many most useful pieces of chamber and kitchen furniture. They appear to have been a people of great taste, and to have set the fashion, in point of dress, throughout all Greece. Their cooks, embroiderers, and confectioners, were famous over all the polite world; and we may suppose their riding-masters did not enjoy a less brilliant reputation, since we are told of their having taught their horses to dance to a particular tune. The public voice, however, of all ages, has been against them. Sybaris255 was ten leagues from Croton. Four neighbouring states, and twenty-five cities, were subject to it; so that it was alone able to raise an army of three hundred thousand men. The opulence of Sybaris was soon followed by luxury, and such a dissoluteness as is scarcely possible. The citizens employed themselves in nothing but banquets, games, shows, parties of pleasure, and carnivals. Public rewards and marks of distinction were bestowed on those who gave the most magnificent entertainments; and even to such cooks as were best skilled in the important art of making new refinements to tickle the palate. The Sybarites carried their delicacy and effeminacy to such a height, that they carefully removed from their city all such artificers whose work was noisy; and would not suffer any cocks in it, lest their shrill, piercing crow should disturb their slumbers.”

All these evils were heightened by dissension and discord, which at last proved their ruin. Five hundred of the wealthiest in the city having been expelled by the faction of one Telys, fled to Croton. Telys demanded to have them surrendered to him; and, on the refusal of the Crotonians to deliver them up, prompted to this generous resolution by Pythagoras, who then lived among them, war was declared. The Crotonians were headed by Milo, the famous champion; over whose shoulders a lion’s skin was thrown, and himself armed with a club, like another Hercules. The latter gained a complete victory, and made a dreadful havoc of those who fled, so that very few escaped; and Sybaris was depopulated.

About sixty years after this some Thessalians came and settled in it; however, they did not long enjoy peace, being driven out by the Crotonians. Being thus reduced to the most fatal extremity, they implored the succour of the LacedÆmonians and Athenians. The latter, moved to compassion at their deplorable condition, after causing proclamation to be made in Peloponnesus, that all who were willing to assist that colony were at liberty to do it, sent the Sybarites a fleet of ten ships, under the command of Lampon and Xenocrates. They built a city near the ancient Sybaris, and called it Thurium.

Two men, greatly renowned for their learning, the one an orator, and the other an historian, settled in this colony. The first was Lysias, at that time but fifteen years of age. He lived in Thurium, till that ill fate which befel the Athenians in Sicily, and then went to Athens.

The second was Herodotus. Though he was born in Halicarnassus, a city of Caria, he was considered as a native of Thurium, because he settled there with that colony. Divisions soon broke out in the city, on occasion of the new inhabitants, whom the rest would exclude from all public employments and privileges. But as these were much more numerous, they repulsed all the ancient Sybarites, and got the sole possession of the city. Being supported by the alliance they made with the people of Croton, they grew very powerful; and, having settled a popular form of government in their city, they divided the citizens into ten tribes, which they called by the names of the different nations whence they sprang.

Sybaris was destroyed five times; but had always the good fortune to be restored. It at length, however, fell into irredeemable decay; and, no doubt, justly, for every excess256, whether of luxury or voluptuousness, could be found there. The indolence of the inhabitants was so great, that they boasted that they never saw the sun either rise or set. The greatest encouragement was liberally lavished on such as invented new pleasures; and, as a natural consequence, though the city enjoyed a long period of prosperity, not a single citizen’s name has been preserved to posterity, who is entitled to admiration, either for deeds of heroism, or the practice of milder virtues in private life.

There is, nevertheless, one anecdote recorded in their favour. Being enslaved by the Lucanians, and afterwards subjected to the Romans, they still retained a fond attachment to the manners of Greece; and are said to have displayed their partiality to their mother-country, in a manner that evinces both their taste and their feeling. Being compelled by the will of the conquerors, or by other circumstances, to adopt a foreign language and foreign manners, they were accustomed to assemble annually, on one of the great festivals of Greece, in order to revive the memory of their Grecian origin, to speak their primitive language, and to deplore, with tears and lamentations, their sad degradation. It would afford peculiar pleasure to discover some monument of a people of so much sensibility, and of such persevering patriotism.

Seventy days sufficed to destroy all their grandeur! Five hundred and seventy-two years before the Christian era, the Crotoniates, under the famous athlete Milo, as we have already related, defeated the Sybarites in a pitched battle, broke down the dams of the Crathis, and let the furious stream into the town, where it soon overturned and swept away every building of use and ornament. The inhabitants were massacred without mercy; and the few that escaped the slaughter, and attempted to restore their city, were cut to pieces by a colony of Athenians, who afterwards removed to some distance, and founded Thurium.

“Many ages, alas!” continues Mr. Swinburne, “have now revolved since man inhabited these plains in sufficient numbers to secure salubrity. The rivers have long rolled lawless over these low, desolated fields; leaving, as they shrink back to their beds, black pools and nauseous swamps, to poison the whole region, and drive mankind still farther from its ancient possessions. Nothing in reality remains of Sybaris, which once gave law to nations, and could muster even so large a force as 300,000 fighting men. Not one stone remains upon another257!”