Mutual discord first sapped the prosperity of Magna Graecia.
In 510 Croton, having defeated the Sybarites in a great battle, totally destroyed their city. Croton maintained alone the leading position which had belonged jointly to the Achaean cities (Diod. xiv. 103); but from that time Magna Graecia steadily declined.
In the war between Athens and Syracuse Magna Graecia took comparatively little part; Locri was strongly antiAthenian, but Rhegium, though it was the headquarters of the Athenians in 427, remained neutral in 415.
Foreign enemies pressed heavily on it.
The Lucanians and Bruttians on the north captured one town after another.
Dionysius of Syracuse attacked them from the south; and after he defeated the Crotoniate league and destroyed Caulonia (389 B.C.), Tarentum remained the only powerful city.
Henceforth the history of Magna Graecia is only a record of the vicissitudes of Tarentum (q.v.).
Repeated expeditions from Sparta and Epirus tried in vain to prop up the decaying Greek states against the Lucanians and Bruttians; and when in 282 the Romans appeared in the Tarentine Gulf the end was close at hand.
The aid which Pyrrhus brought did little good to the Tarentines, and his final departure in 274 left them defenceless. During these constant wars the Greek cities had been steadily decaying; and in the second Punic war, when most of them seized the opportunity of revolting from Rome, their very existence was in some cases annihilated.
Malaria increased in strength as the population diminished.
We are told by Cicero (De am. 4), Magna Graecia nunc guidon deleta est.
Many of the cities completely disappeared, and hardly any of them were of great importance under the Roman empire; some, like Tarentum, 1 This passage should perhaps be referred to the 8th century B.C. It is the first mention of an Italian place in a literary record.
maintained their existence into modern times, and in these only (except at Locri) have archaeological investigations of any importance been carried on; so that there still remains a considerable field for investigation. (T. As.)
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