SYBARIS AND ITS EMPIRE – part 2

As we have seen, the empire of Sybaris went beyond the borders of the area directly marked by the sanctuaries. The foundation of Poseidonia made the Sybaris’ aims explicit to open a door on the Tyrrhenian Sea as close as possible to the flourishing Etruscan settlements of Campania, located just north of the Sele river, and at the same time, to control the communities of Oenotrians of the interior who, between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C. were able to consolidate and to take on the role of attractive business partners. These were small inhabited areas that were in close contact with Sybaris from whom they learnt the use of writing and the alphabet, as shown by the inscription on the “Castelluccio” olla-shaped jar and, above all, the “Tortora cippus”. It is a kind of “lex sacra” (sacred law) written in a palaeo-Italic language (the language of the Oenotrians), adapting and integrating the Achaean alphabet used by Sybaris and Poseidonia.
The same Oenotrian communities used a certain coinage named by the modern scholars the “coins of the alliance”. They were incuse coins (with hollow images), probably beaten at Sybaris, which presented on one side the retrospective bull (which looks backwards) and on the other side the names of the towns such as PAL-MOL (Palinuro and the nearby Molpa), SIRINO-PYXOES (Sirinos in the “Valle del Noce” and Pixunte in the Gulf of Policastro).
For the maintenance of this complex political-institutional organisation, Poseidonia played a very important role. That Sybarite colony represented the last bastion of Achaean Hellenism in front of the flourishing Etruscan centres north of the Sele river and privileged mediator with the communities of Oenotrians gravitating on the Tyrrhenian Sea. This role was reiterated on the occasion of the foundation of Velia (Herodotus, I, 167) – Poseidonia favoured the foundation of Velia by the Phocaeans – but also in the Olympia treaty where Poseidonia together with the Gods, was called to guarantee the pact between Sybarites and the Serdàioi.
But the great power of Sybaris did not hold up to the innovative thrusts that rose from the great mass of the lower-middle social classes, kept away from the many riches. Towards the end of the 6th century, B.C. riots led to the rise of the tyranny of “Telis”, who was so strongly anti-aristocratic that in 510 B.C. 500 Sybarite nobles were forced to find shelter in the oligarchic Kroton, asking and obtaining asylum. When Telis asked for them to be returned, Kroton – where a strongly influential figure was Pythagoras – refused. The result was a war that saw Sybaris badly defeated. After a siege of 70 days, the city itself was destroyed forever by the diversion of the Crathis (Crati) river which submerged the remains (Strabo, VI, C 263). In this regard, Domenico Mussi, an Italian historian (1934-2010), has rightly pointed out that this war was not a simple fight between neighbouring Greek “pòleis” (cities), but two “pòleis” with opposite political and institutional orientations.
The outcome of the war profoundly changed the political scenario of “Magna Graecia”, and radically changed the previous balance, weakening the Achaean cities. The indigenous populations economically and/or politically linked to Sybaris went through a critical period, as can be seen from the downsizing of many main centres and their necropolises and the end of the emissions of the “coins of the alliance”.

Excerpt from: Gioacchino Francesco La Torre, Sicilia e Magna Grecia , Editori Laterza, 2011, pp 84-90

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