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This was a part of Magna Græcia, which included many rich cities in the southern portion of the peninsula, among which were Tarentum, and there had been the earliest of the Greek colonies, Sybaris, the abode of wealth and luxury, until its destruction at the time of the fall of the Tarquins.
A few days later a messenger came in from one of the bands at the other side of the promontory of Bruttium, saying they had obtained news that preparations were being made at Sybaris for the landing of a very large body of troops, and that it was said to be the intention of the Romans to make a great expedition through the mountains and entirely exterminate the outlaws.
Somewhere in that enchanted forest, where the wild vine trails from tree to tree, where birds and creatures of the marshy solitude haunt their ancient home, lie buried the stones of Sins. Night hid from me the scenes that followed. Darkling, I passed again through the station called Sybaris, and on and on by the sea-shore, the sound of breakers often audible.
On recovering consciousness, I found that three teeth had been knocked into my mouth, the diseased one and two others, which though healthy, would probably at some future time have caused me pain. Salute Rhodopis and the handsome Phanes from me. You I invite to an entertainment at my house in Sybaris, this day year.
The Romans found them so fickle and troublesome that they were all reduced in one little war after another. The Tarentines had to surrender and lose their walls and their fleet, and so had the people of Sybaris, who have become a proverb for idleness, for they were so lazy that they were said to have killed all their crowing-birds for waking them too early in the morning.
Every place they touched blossomed into beauty, with temples and houses adorned with sculpture and painting. One of their cities on the coast of Italy was called Sybaris, and it has given us the word "sybarite," which means a person who abandons himself to luxury.
I can imagine, for instance, some young and ardent lover of art, in the days when Pythagoras taught under those glittering colonnades of Croton, when the fleets of Metapontum swept the blue Ionian and Sybaris taught the world how to live a life of ease I can almost see this youth," he pursued enthusiastically, "flitting from a hot palace on the plain towards those breezy heights and, inflamed with an all-absorbing passion for the beautiful, carrying up with him one or two, just one or two, of those beloved bronzes from which he could not, and would not, be parted no, not even for a short summer month to be a joy to his eyes and an inspiration to h is soul among the mountain solitudes.
The "sister land" is the district of Sybaris in South Italy, where the river Crathis has, or had, a red-gold colour, which makes golden the hair of men and the fleeces of sheep; and the water never lost its freshness. Talthybius is a loyal soldier with every wish to be kind.
Last night the wind changed and the sky began to clear; this morning I awoke in sunshine, and with a feeling of eagerness for my journey. I shall look upon the Ionian Sea, not merely from a train or a steamboat as before, but at long leisure: I shall see the shores where once were Tarentum and Sybaris, Croton and Locri.
Be off now to the Hales stream, and dig cyclamen. Comatas. Let Himera flow with milk instead of water, and thou, Crathis, run red with wine, and all thy reeds bear apples. Lacon. Would that the fount of Sybaris may flow with honey, and may the maiden's pail, at dawning, be dipped, not in water, but in the honeycomb. Comatas.
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