Plato in Italy

their companions in the new fatherland (1). The most illustrious were Callicratidas the Spartan, father of the famous Gylippus, and, like his son, banished for embezzlement; and Herodotus of Halicarnassus, to whom the muses gave the right to hope for a better fate in his ancient fatherland.

The new city took its name from Thuria, a spring not far from its walls. But this new name of Thuria has the same meaning as the ancient Sybaris, and both denote abundance (2). When you travel through Italy, you encounter at every step similar names, which you would almost call mystical, which always indicate the same thing that was indicated by another, more ancient name that is no longer in use today; convincing proof of very remote antiquity, and of very serious events in the succession of peoples!

Thurii stands a few stadia from the sea. Its port is Roscianum (3). The city is regularly built. It represents a rectangle, the longest side of which stretches from north to south. Four streets divide it in length, and they take their names from Hercules, Bacchus,

(1) Diodorus Siculus.
(2) Mazzocchi on T. II. — Having become a Roman colony, Thurii was called Copiae.
(3) Today Rossano.