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As one sails from Rhegium towards the east, and at a distance of fifty stadia, one comes to Cape Leucopetra1 (so called from its color), in which, it is said, the Apennine Mountain terminates. Then comes Heracleium, which is the last cape of Italy and inclines towards the south; for on doubling it one immediately sails with the southwest wind as far as Cape Iapygia, and then veers off, always more and more, towards the northwest in the direction of the Ionian Gulf.2 After Heracleium comes a cape belonging to Locris, which is called Zephyrium; its harbor is exposed to the winds that blow from the west, and hence the name. Then comes the city Locri Epizephyrii,3 a colony of the Locri who live on the Crisaean Gulf,4 which was led out by Evanthes only a little while after the founding of Croton and Syracuse.5 Ephorus is wrong in calling it a colony of the Locri Opuntii. However, they lived only three or four years at Zephyrium, and then moved the city to its present site, with the cooperation of Syracusans [for at the same time the latter, among whom . . .]6 And at Zephyrium there is a spring, called Locria, where the Locri first pitched camp. The distance from Rhegium to Locri is six hundred stadia. The city is situated on the brow of a hill called Epopis.
1 Literally, "White Rock."
2 The "Ionian Gulf" was the southern "part of what is now called the Adriatic Sea" (2. 5. 20); see 7. 5. 8-9.
3 Literally, the "western Locrians," both city and inhabitants having the same name.
4 Now the Gulf of Salona in the Gulf of Corinth.
5 Croton and Syracuse were founded, respectively, in 710 and 734 B.C. According to Diod. Sic. 4.24, Heracles had unintentionally killed Croton and had foretold the founding of a famous city on the site, the same to be named after Croton.
6 The Greek text, here translated as it stands, is corrupt. The emendations thus far offered yield (instead of the nine English words of the above rendering) either (1) "for the latter were living" (or "had taken up their abode") "there at the same time" or (2) "together with the Tarantini." There seems to be no definite corroborative evidence for either interpretation; but according to Pausanias, "colonies were sent to Croton, and to Locri at Cape Zephyrium, by the Lacedaemonians" (3.3); and "Tarentum is a Lacedaemonian colony" (10. 10). Cp. the reference to the Tarantini in Strabo's next paragraph.
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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