7. The principal places to be mentioned in Italy besides Rhegium are Croton and Metapontum. The former was an Achæan and Lacedæmonian colony; in the founding of which, according to tradition, the oracle had an important share;(1138) the memory of which is preserved by temples of Apollo Pythius, Hyperboreus,(1139) and Alæus,(1140) within, and close to the town. Croton was peculiarly subject to the influence of Apollo, whose worship operated to an unusual extent on the character and customs of its inhabitants. On the founding of Metapontum our information is scanty. The inhabitants generally supposed themselves to be of Achæan origin; yet Ephorus has preserved a remarkable, though confused tradition, that Daulius the tyrant of Crissa was the founder of that town.(1141) It seems, then, that inhabitants of Daulis, in the narrow valley of Parnassus, and Crissæans, from the coast, had passed over to Italy in very early times. The inhabitants of Metapontum, as ancient subjects of Apollo, sent him golden ears of corn (χρυσοῦν θέρος) as a tithe of their harvest; we find on their coins the full ears of barley, which were paid as tribute, and on the reverse the god himself, armed with his helmet, arrow and bow, as a conqueror, and holding a branch of laurel; exactly coinciding with the symbols used in the temple of Delphi.(1142) Thus historical tradition and religious symbols both point to the same conclusion.(1143) During the period of which we are treating, the regulation of colonies by the Delphian oracle was the chief instrument which extended the worship of Apollo on the coast of the Mediterranean. In honour of this deity the Chalcideans who founded Naxos, the first Greek colony in Sicily (Olymp. 5. 2. 759 B.C.), erected on the coast an altar of Apollo Archegetas, upon which the Sicilian Theori always sacrificed when they sailed to the temple of Apollo in their mother-country.(1144) Apollonia, the Corinthian settlement on the Ionian sea, was also supposed to have been founded by Apollo;(1145) hence the above-mentioned custom of sending “_the golden summer_” to Delphi prevailed in this town.(1146) We have in a former work(1147) shown that the worship at Thera and Cyrene was paid to the deity of the Theban Ægidæ, viz., the Carnean Apollo; who, however, at the founding of the colony (Olymp. 37), was already considered as the same with the Dorian god; hence the fountain of Apollo at Cyrene, its colony of Apollonia, &c. Mythology, which often first clothes the events of history in a fabulous garb, and then refers them to an early and unknown time, expressed the founding of Cyrene, under the guidance of the temple of Apollo, in the following elegant personification—That Cyrene, a Thessalian nymph, the favourite of Apollo, was carried by her divine lover to Africa, in his chariot drawn by swans.(1148)