Strabo · c. 20 CE (Books I–VI likely composed/available by this period)
primary
passage 219 of 384 · BOOK I. (5/12)
Rhegium, where the strait begins to widen, is a hundred [stadia] as you advance in a direction towards the exterior and eastern sea, which is called the sea of Sicily.
- Rhegium[2134] was founded by certain Chalcidenses, who, as they say, were decimated as an offering to Apollo in a time of scarcity, by order of an oracle, and afterwards removed hither from Delphi, taking with them certain others from home. As Antiochus says, the Zanclæans sent for the Chalcidenses, and appointed Antimnestus chief over them. Certain fugitives of the Messenians of Peloponnesus accompanied this colony, who had been compelled to fly by those who refused to give satisfaction to the Lacedæmonians for the violation[2135] of the virgins at Limnæ, whom they had abused when attending the religious festival, and had slain those who assisted them. However when the fugitives had removed to
Macistus, they sent to the oracle complaining against Apollo and Diana for suffering these things to happen notwithstanding they so greatly honoured them, and inquiring how the devoted might be saved. Apollo commanded to send them with the Chalcidenses to Rhegium, and to be grateful, therefore, to his sister Diana for that they were not lost but saved, as they should not be destroyed with their country, which would be annihilated shortly after by the Spartans.[2136] They acted in accordance with the oracle, and thus it was that the rulers of the
Rhegini were all of Messenian race until the time of Anaxilaus.
Antiochus asserts that anciently the whole of this district was inhabited by Sicilians and Morgetes; and that they [CAS. 258] afterwards passed into Sicily when they were expelled by the Œnotri. Some say that
Morgantium[2137] thus received its name from the Morgetes. But the city of the Rhegini became very powerful, and possessed many dependent settlements. It has always been a bulwark for us against the island [of
Sicily], and, indeed, has recently served to that purpose when Sextus
Pompeius alienated Sicily.[2138] It was called Rhegium either, as
Æschylus says, because of the convulsion which had taken place in this region; for Sicily was broken from the continent by earthquakes,
“Whence it is called Rhegium.”[2139]
HKB