Thu'cles
or THE'OCLES (
Θουκλῆς,
Θεοκλῆς), a citizen apparently of Chalcis in Euboea, who, having been cast by storms on the coast of Sicily. took notice of the fertility of the soil, and of the probable ease with which it might be won from the Sicel inhabitants. On his return home he made a report of these things, and was commission by the Chalcidian state to lead forth a body of colonists, Chalcidian and Naxian.
With these he proceeded to Sicily, where he occupied as a strong-hold the hill Taurus, overlooking the sea on the eastern coast--a place remarkable as the spot where Grecian conquest in the island first began, and as the site of the later city of Tauromenium,--and from this eminence, having now obtained possession of the land, he founded in the immediate the neighborhood the town of Naxos, about B. C. 736. (
Thuc. 6.3; Ephor. apud
Strab. vi. p. 267; Hellanic. apud
Steph. Byz. s. v. Χαλκίς; Grote's
Greece, vol. iii. pp. 477. 478.)
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