Note 186 — Chapter LVII · SICILIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXTINCTION OF THE GELONIAN DYNASTY.

The inscription in Boeckh’s Corpus Inscriptt. (No. 74, part i, p. 112) relating to the alliance between Athens and Rhegium, conveys little certain information. Boeckh refers it to a covenant concluded in the archonship of Apseudês at Athens (Olymp. 86, 4, B.C. 433-432, the year before the Peloponnesian war), renewing an alliance which was even then of old date. But it appears to me that the supposition of a renewal is only his own conjecture; and even the name of the archon, Apseudês, which he has restored by a plausible conjecture, can hardly be considered as certain.

If we could believe the story in Justin iv, 3, Rhegium must have ceased to be Ionic before the Peloponnesian war. He states, that in a sedition at Rhegium, one of the parties called in auxiliaries from Himera. These Himeræan exiles having first destroyed the enemies against whom they were invoked, next massacred the friends who had invoked them: “ausi facinus nulli tyranno comparandum.” They married the Rhegine women, and seized the city for themselves.

I do not know what to make of this story, which neither appears noticed in Thucydidês, nor seems to consist with what he does tell us.