+6.+ And as to a treaty, none ever existed, or was said to have
existed, between them and the Locrians in Greece; but they all knew
by tradition of one with the Sicels: of which they give the following
account. When they first appeared, and found the Sicels occupying the
district in which they are themselves now dwelling, these natives were
in terror of them, and admitted them through fear into the country; and
the new-comers made a sworn agreement with them that “they would be
friendly and share the country with them, as long as they stood upon
the ground they then stood upon, and kept heads upon their shoulders.”
But, while the oaths were being taken, they say that the Locrians put
earth inside the soles of their shoes, and heads of garlic concealed on
their shoulders, before they swore; and that then they shook the earth
out of their shoes, and threw the heads of garlic off their shoulders,
and soon afterwards expelled the Sicels from the country. This is the
story current at Locri....
By an extraordinary oversight Timaeus of Tauromenium commits himself
to the statement that it was not customary with the Greeks to possess
slaves.[28]...
[Sidenote: Locri Epizephyrii colonised by certain slaves who had
obtained their freedom, and by some free born women.]
These considerations would lead us to trust Aristotle rather than
Timaeus. His next statement is still more strange. For to suppose, with
Timaeus, that it was unlikely that men, who had been the slaves of the
allies of the Lacedaemonians, would continue the kindly feelings and
adopt the friendships of their late masters is foolish. For when they
had the good fortune to recover their freedom, and a certain time has
elapsed, men, who have been slaves, not only endeavour to adopt the
friendships of their late masters, but also their ties of hospitality
and blood: in fact, their aim is to keep them up even more than the
ties of nature, for the express purpose of thereby wiping out the
remembrance of their former degradation and humble position; because
they wish to pose as the descendants of their masters rather than as
their freedmen. And this is what in all probability happened in the
case of the Locrians. They had removed to a great distance from all who
knew their secret; the lapse of time favoured their pretensions; and
they were not therefore so foolish as to maintain any customs likely
to revive the memory of their own degradation, rather than such as
would contribute to conceal it. Therefore they very naturally called
their city by the name of that from which the women came; and claimed a
relationship with those women: and, moreover, renewed the friendships
which were ancestral to the families of the women.
[Sidenote: The Locrians then were naturally friends of Sparta and
enemies of Athens.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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