3. The first of the cities which at present remain on the aforesaid side is Messana, built at the head of the gulf of Pelorias, which is curved very considerably towards the east, and forms a bay. The passage across to Rhegium[2254] is 60 stadia, but the distance to the Columna Rheginorum is much less. It was from a colony of the Messenians of the Peloponnesus that it was named Messana, having been originally called Zancle, on account of the great inequality of the coast (for anything irregular was termed ζάγκλιον).[2255] It was originally founded by the people of Naxos near Catana. Afterwards the Mamertini, a tribe of Campanians, took possession of it.[2256] The Romans, in the war in Sicily against the Carthaginians, used it as an arsenal.[2257] Still more recently,[2258] Sextus Pompeius assembled his fleet in it, to contend against Augustus Cæsar; and when he relinquished the island, he took ship from thence.[2259] Charybdis[2260] is pointed out at a short distance from the city in the Strait, an immense gulf, into which the back currents of the Strait frequently impel ships, carrying them down with a whirl and the violence of the eddy. When they are swallowed down and shattered, the wrecks are cast by the stream on the shore of Tauromenia,[2261] which they call, on account of this kind of accumulation, the dunghill.[2262] So greatly have the Mamertini prevailed over the Messenians, that they have by degrees wrested the city from them. The inhabitants generally are rather called Mamertini than Messenians. The district abounds in wine, which we do not call Messenian, but Mamertinian: it vies with the best produced in Italy.[2263] The city is well peopled, but Catana is more populous, which has been colonized by the Romans.[2264] Tauromenium is less populous than either. Catana was founded by people from Naxos, and Tauromenium by the Zanclæans of Hybla,[2265] but Catana was deprived of its original inhabitants when Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, introduced others, and called it by the name of Ætna instead of Catana. It is of this that Pindar says he was the founder, when he sings, “Thou understandest what I say, O father, that bearest the same name with the splendid holy sacrifices, thou founder of Ætna.”[2266] But on the death of Hiero,[2267] the Catanæans returned and expelled the new inhabitants, and demolished the mausoleum of the tyrant. The Ætnæans, compelled to retire,[2268] established themselves on a hilly district of Ætna, called Innesa,[2269] and called the place Ætna. It is distant from Catana about 80 stadia. They still acknowledged Hiero as their founder.