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Λᾶόν τε καὶ Σκίδρον. Originally dependent colonies of Sybaris, which, after the destruction of that city in 510 B. C. (cf. v. 44), probably received the exiles. Both lay on the west coast of Italy, probably not far apart. Laus was on the river still called Lao, the boundary of Lucania (Strabo 253), four hundred stades from Velia. ἐξεινώθησαν. Cf. Athen. xii. 519 b ἐφόρουν δ᾽ οἱ Συβαρῖται καὶ ἱμάτια Μιλησίων ἐρίων πεποιημένα: ἀφ᾽ ὧν δὴ καὶ αἱ φιλίαι ταῖς πόλεσιν ἐγένοντο, ὡς ὁ Τιμαῖος ἱστορεῖ. ἠγάπων γὰρ τῶν μὲν ἐξ Ἰταλίας Τυρρηνούς, τῶν δ̓ ἔξωθεν τοὺς Ἴωνας. These friendships of Sybaris with Miletus and Etruria were doubtless commercial. Sybaris was the dépôt to which the wares of Asia and Egypt were brought by Milesian ships (cf. v. 99 n.). Thence they were carried overland to Laus, and there reshipped for Etruria. The control of this land-route was all the more important, as foes of Miletus, Chalcis, and her allies (v. 99 n.) commanded the Straits of Messina. The friendship of the Etruscans with Sybaris is in marked contrast with their hostility to other Greeks in the Tyrrhene seas (cf. i. 166). Further proof of the importance of this overland route may be found in the alliance coins (Pais, Ancient Italy, p. 83) of Siris and Pyxus (before 510 B. C.), and later of New Sybaris and Posidonia (circ. 450), Croton and Temesa, &c. (Hill, G. and R. C., pp. 104, 115), and in the frequent occurrence of Greek vases in Campanian and Etruscan tombs (Lenormant, La Grande Grèce, i. 263 f.). The colony of Thurii may have been an attempt to revive this old trade, Athens here, as elsewhere, figuring as the heir of Miletus (v. 97. 2 n.). Themistocles would seem to have originated the idea of a colony in that district (viii. 62; Plut. Them. 32), afterwards imperfectly realized by Pericles.
οὐδὲν ὁμοίως. For asyndeton in such appended notes, which may be later additions by the author, cf. i. 20; vii. 54. 3, 111. 2, &c. ‘In this they (the Sybarites) were quite unlike the Athenians.’ Phrynichus was an elder contemporary of Aeschylus. Of his drama on the fall of Miletus no fragment has survived. It was probably the first attempt to treat in tragedy an event of the day, an attempt repeated by Phrynichus in his Phoenissae (476 B. C.), which, like the Persae of Aeschylus, represented the defeat of Xerxes. His earlier drama may have contained reproaches of Athens for the desertion of Miletus (οἰκήια κακά), and have been intended to awaken the national spirit and inspire resistance to Persia, perhaps by sea, since Themistocles, choragus for Phrynichus in 476 B. C. (Plut. Them. 5), is said to have begun the building of Piraeus as archon in 493 B. C. (vii. 143 n.). For his manifesto the author was punished, probably by those responsible for the withdrawal from Ionia (v. 103 n.; cf. Meyer, iii, § 182-3). Cf. the prosecution of Miltiades (ch. 104) on his return from the Chersonese. διδάξαντι: the term for the teaching of actors and chorus by the author (i. 23) = ‘putting on the stage’.
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