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The Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, who had got into their hands many
more than the Phocaeans from among the crews of the forty vessels that
were destroyed, landed their captives upon the coast after the fight,
and stoned them all to death. Afterwards, when sheep, or oxen, or
even men of the district of Agylla passed by the spot where the
murdered Phocaeans lay, their bodies became distorted, or they were
seized with palsy, or they lost the use of some of their limbs. On
this the people of Agylla sent to Delphi to ask the oracle how they
might expiate their sin. The answer of the Pythoness required them to
institute the custom, which they still observe, of honouring the dead
Phocaeans with magnificent funeral rites, and solemn games, both
gymnic and equestrian. Such, then, was the fate that befell the
Phocaean prisoners. The other Phocaeans, who had fled to Rhegium,
became after a while the founders of the city called Vela, in the
district of Oenotria. This city they colonised, upon the showing of
a man of Posidonia, who suggested that the oracle had not meant to bid
them set up a town in Cyrnus the island, but set up the worship of
Cyrnus the hero.
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