Sybaris

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Sybaris ( Greek  Σύβαρις ) was an ancient Greek city ​​on the Gulf of Taranto . Its remains were located in the 1960s in the municipality of Cassano allo Ionio .

Ancient coin from Sybaris with an image of a bull (before 510 BC)

history

founding

Sybaris was founded around 720 BC. Founded on the east coast of Calabria as a colony by Achaeans from Helike and some Troizzards and soon achieved significant power and size through the fertility of the area and through trade. It founded several daughter colonies, including Poseidonia (Latin Paestum ), as well as Laos and Skidros , and ruled over 25 cities and 4 peoples in the surrounding area. According to Diodorus , the city owed its growth and prosperity above all to its willingness to grant immigrants citizenship. Both Diodor and Strabo name a population or army strength of 300,000, but the figure is doubted. Strabo gives 50 stadiums (around 9 km) as the perimeter of the city . Athenaios mentions an agora and a temple of Hera on buildings .

Heyday

The magnificent and luxurious lifestyle of "sybarite" was finally proverbial in ancient Greece, sybaritism is now a term for gluttony and indulgence, Sybarite called a devoted the luxury sissy.

For the well-being of the sybarites, see also the section on Sybaris in the article Tryphe .

The sybaritic luxury life has become the subject of numerous anecdotes, some of which are passed down in the scholarly meal of Athenaeus. Sybaritikoi logoi ("sybaritic stories") appear in the 5th century BC. To have formed almost a literary genre. Some of these stories are legendary and are strongly reminiscent of stories from the land of milk and honey . From the Thuriopersai des Metagenes , a comedy poet of the 5th century:

... the other river [Sybaris] pushes a wave of cheesecake and meat and boiled rays that waggle over to us, while the smaller tributaries with baked squid, sea bream and crawfish ... Pieces of fish that have been steamed by themselves come up and slide in our mouth.

Apart from such sybaritic anecdotes, there was apparently little to report for the ancient historians from the heyday of Sybaris. The close trade connections between Sybaris and Miletus are mentioned, from where the Sybarites obtained the wool for their clothes. This connection was so close and profitable that when Sybaris was destroyed in Miletus, there was public mourning: Herodotus reports that the youth of Miletus shaved their hair as a sign of mourning. It is also reported that the Sybarites traded intensively with the Etruscans and the Ionians , who, like them, valued well-being.

Athenaius names the bathtub and chamber pot as cultural achievements and inventions of the sybarites . The chamber pot would not have been placed under the bed, but would have been taken to banquets. In addition, they were the first to pass noise protection laws . The sybarites did not tolerate noisy handicrafts such as blacksmiths and carpenters in the city. In order to protect the sleep of the residents, it was not even allowed to keep taps.

In the field of sporting competitions, Sybaris seems to have had little success. The only Olympic Games winner reported was Philytas von Sybaris, who won the boys' boxing game at the 41st Games. Where no price could be won directly, the sybarites tried, according to Athenaios, to buy sporting prestige by organizing games themselves at the same time as the Olympic Games. Unusually high prizes were put on hold so that athletes should opt for sybaritic money instead of Olympic glory.

Downfall

510 BC There was an uprising in Sybaris under the leadership of a certain Tely, who brought charges against the leaders of the Sybarites and achieved that the 500 wealthiest citizens were expelled and their property confiscated. The exiles fled to the neighboring town of Croton and asked for protection there. Telys urged the Krotonians to hand over the refugees or to expect war. The Krotoner were initially undecided, but were persuaded by Pythagoras to reject the ultimatum, whereupon Sybaris sent a superior army to Croton.

Athenaios added bloody details: Telys had 30 Crotons envoy murdered and had the corpses thrown in front of the walls for the wild animals to eat. As a result of the iniquity, all the city officials had the same dream on one of the following nights: They saw the city goddess Hera walk across the agora and vomit bile in the middle. He also quotes Herakleides of Pontus , according to which the sybarites of Tely finally overthrew and his followers, who fled to the altars, murdered there. This desecration of the altars and disregard for the asylum caused the cult image of Hera to turn around. In addition, a source of blood sprang from the floor of the temple, which gushed so abundantly that the neighborhood had to be cordoned off with bronze doors.

The course of the war confirmed the gloomy omen: after 70 days of war, the defenders of Kroton won under the leadership of the athlete Milon , a multiple winner of the Olympic Games. According to Diodorus, the merit of the victory was attributed to Milon, who appeared on the battlefield with his Olympic crowns and the attributes of Heracles . According to Athenaeus, the sybarites had trained their horses to move to flute music when moving. When the Crotonians used flute players in their army, "the horses danced out of battle" and deserted with their riders to the Crotonians. Finally, Herodotus reports that the sybarites claimed that Dorieus , the stepbrother of the Spartan king Cleomenes I, fought on the side of Crotons , while the Crotonians claimed that no stranger had helped them except the seer Callias of Elis, who stood before the tyrant Telys fled from Sybaris after the oracles for the campaign against Croton were unfavorable.

In revenge, Sybaris was completely destroyed by flowing the Crathis River over the city. The inhabitants fled to the sybaritic colonies of Laos and Skidros on the Tyrrhenian coast . Two attempts to rebuild failed, instead the city of Thurioi was founded as a new colony inland .

Today's Sibari, a district of the municipality of Cassano allo Ionio , is a holiday resort and is about five kilometers further inland than the old Sybaris. The finds from Sybaris are exhibited in the city's archaeological museum.

Archaeological exploration

From the ancient reports only the approximate location of Sybaris was known. It was known that it was in the plain between the rivers Crathis (today's Crati ) and the Sybaris (today's Coscile ). The fact that no trace of one of the most important Greek cities of antiquity could be found has preoccupied archeology since the middle of the 19th century, when an approximate localization was first attempted.

As later became clear, progress was only possible through new means of archaeological prospecting . During excavations, living areas were found that were supplied with wells, as well as a public building and a pottery. In February 2013, the archaeological dig site was flooded with water and mud due to a breach of the Crati dam.

See also

literature

  • Froelich G. Rainey : The Search for Sybaris. 1960 - 1965. Fondazione Lerici, Politecnico di Milano, Milan 1967. Text in English and Italian.
  • Froelich G. Rainey: The Location of Archaic Greek Sybaris. American Journal for Archeology. Vol. 73. No. 3 (July 1969). Pp. 261-273. Review article, which also reports the results of the excavations after the main campaign in 1965.
  • Orville H. Bullitt: Search for Sybaris . Lippincott, Philadelphia & New York 1969 (popular account of the story of Sybaris and the discovery). German edition: The search for Sybaris. Report on an archaeological discovery . Hans E. Günther, Stuttgart 1971.
  • NK Rutter: Sybaris - Legend and Reality. Greece & Rome. Second series. Vol. 17. No. 2 (October 1970). Pp. 168-176
  • Gerhard Radke : Sybaris 4). In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 5, Stuttgart 1975, Col. 439 f.
  • Peter Kracht: The commercial historical importance of the city of Sybaris up to its destruction in 510 BC Chr. In: Munster Contributions to Ancient Trade History (MPAH) . tape 7 , no. 1 . Scripta Mercaturae, 1988, ISSN  0722-4532 , p. 30-45 .
  • Luigi Cucci: Geology versus myth: the Holocene evolution of the Sybaris Plain. Annals of Geophysics Vol. 48. No. 6 (December 2005). Pp. 1017-1033 ( PDF )

Web links

Wiktionary: Sybaris  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Diodor Library 9/12/2
  2. Strabon Geographika 6.1.13 (263)
  3. Athenaios Deipnosophistai 12.518c-522d
  4. James N. Davidson: Courtesans and Seafood. Siedler, Berlin 1999. pp. 332f.
  5. Quoted from Davidson.
  6. Herodotus 6.21.1.
  7. Pausania's description of Greece 5.8.9.
  8. Athenaios Deipnosophistai 12.522a, 522d.
  9. Herodotus (5.44.1) describes Telys as βασιλεύς , i.e. king, Diodorus calls him a demagogue .
  10. Athenaios Deipnosophistai 12521
  11. Diodor Library September 12, 2 to October 12, 1
  12. Athenaios Deipnosophistai 12.520c
  13. Herodotus 5.44-45
  14. Strabon Geographika 6.1.13
  15. Cavallari's note degli scavi di antichitá. Rome 1879-81
  16. Sybaris excavation site flooded  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Report from February 12, 2013 in the portal art-magazin.de , accessed on February 14, 2013@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.art-magazin.de  

Coordinates: 39 ° 45 '  N , 16 ° 28'  E