In 510 Croton, having defeated the Sybarites in a great battle, totally destroyed their city. Mutual discord first sapped the prosperity of Magna Graecia. One ship of Croton, however, fought at Salamis, though it is not recorded that Greece asked the Italiotes for help when it sent ambassadors to Gelon of Syracuse. They sent competitors to the Olympic games (among them the famous Milo of Croton) and the physicians of Croton early in the 6th century (especially in the person of Democedes) were reputed the best in Greece but politically they appear to have generally kept themselves separate. The poet Ibycus, though a native of Rhegium, led a very wandering life. Other departments of literature do not seem to have been so much cultivated among them. The Pythagorean and Eleatic systems of philosophy had their chief seat in Magna Graecia. An amphictyonic league, meeting in common rites at the temple of Hera on the Lacinian promontory, fostered a feeling of unity among them. After the Achaean cities had combined to destroy the Ionic Siris, and had founded Metapontum as a counterpoise to the Dorian Tarentum, there seems to have been little strife among the Italiotes. The Italian colonies were planted among friendly, almost kindred, races, and grew much more rapidly than the Sicilian Greek states, which had to contend against the power of Carthage. Ionian Greeks fleeing from foreign invasion founded Siris about 650 B.C., and, much later, Elea (540). It was industrial, depending largely on the purple and pottery trade. Tarentum is remarkable as the only foreign settlement made by the Spartans. Tarentum (whether or no founded by pre-Dorian Greeks - its founders bore the unexplained name of Partheniae) became a Laconian colony at some unknown date, whence a legend grew up connecting the Partheniae with Sparta, and 707 B.C.
Sybaris (721) and Crotona (703) were Achaean settlements Locri Epizephyrii (about 710) was settled by Ozolian Locrians, so that, had it not been for the Dorian colony of Tarentum, the southern coast of Italy would have been entirely occupied by a group of Achaean cities. After this the energy of Chalcis went onward to Sicily, and the states of the Corinthian Gulf carried out the colonization of Italy, Rhegium having been founded, it is true, by Chalcis, but after Messana (Zancle), and at the request of the inhabitants of the latter. 1 The trade for a long time was chiefly in the hands of the Euboeans and Cyme (Cumae) in Campania was founded in the 8th century B.C., when the Euboean Cyme was still a great city. At an early time a trade in copper was carried on between Greece and Temesa (Homer, Od. The Greek colonies were established first as trading stations, which grew into independent cities. The interior, which the Greeks never subdued, continued to be in the hands of the Bruttii, the native mountaineers, from whom the district was named in Roman times ( Bperrfa also in Greek writers). MAGNA GRAECIA µey tXi `EXX6), the name given (first, apparently, in the 6th century B.C.) to the group of Greek cities along the coast of the "toe" of South Italy (or more strictly those only from Tarentum to Locri, along the east coast), while the people were called Italiotes ('IraXeivrac).
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