The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator by Senator Cassiodorus
page 44 of 851 (05%)
page 44 of 851 (05%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
|
[11]'A century before the end of the Republic, a city much more considerable than that which had existed in the past was again established near the point where the Greek Scylletion had existed. Among the colonies of Roman citizens founded B.C. 123 on the rogation of Caius Gracchus, was one sent to this part of Bruttii, under the name of Colonia Minervia Scolacium, a name parallel to those of Colonia Neptunia Tarentum and Colonia Junonia Karthago, decided on at the same time. _Scolacium_ is the form that we meet with in Velleius Paterculus, and that is found in an extant Latin inscription of the time of Antoninus Pius. This is the old Latin form of the name of the town. _Scylacium_, which first appears as used by the writers of the first century of our era, is a purely literary form springing from the desire to get nearer to the Greek type _Scylletion_. [Footnote 11: I take the two following paragraphs from Lenormant's La Grande Grèce, pp. 342-3.] 'Scolacium, or Scylacium, a town purely Roman by reason of the origin of its first colonists, was from its earliest days an important city, and remained such till the end of the Empire. Pomponius Mela, Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy speak of it as one of the principal cities of Bruttii. It had for its port Castra Hannibalis. Under Nero its population was strengthened by a new settlement of veterans as colonists. The city then took the names of Colonia Minervia Nervia Augusta Scolacium. We read these names in an inscription discovered in 1762 at 1,800 metres from the modern Squillace, between that city and the sea--an inscription which mentions the construction of an aqueduct bringing water to Scolacium, executed 143 A.D. at the cost of the Emperor Antoninus.' |
|


