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Minos, according to tradition, went to Sicania, or Sicily, as it
is now called, in search of Daedalus, and there perished by a violent
death. After a while the Cretans, warned by some god or other, made
a great expedition into Sicania, all except the Polichnites and the
Praesians, and besieged Camicus (which in my time belonged to
Agrigentum) by the space of five years. At last, however, failing
in their efforts to take the place, and unable to carry on the siege
any longer from the pressure of hunger, they departed and went their
way. Voyaging homewards they had reached Iapygia, when a furious
storm arose and threw them upon the coast. All their vessels were
broken in pieces; and so, as they saw no means of returning to
Crete, they founded the town of Hyria, where they took up their
abode, changing their name from Cretans to Messapian Iapygians, and
at the same time becoming inhabitants of the mainland instead of
islanders. From Hyria they afterwards founded those other towns which
the Tarentines at a much later period endeavoured to take, but could
not, being defeated signally. Indeed so dreadful a slaughter of
Greeks never happened at any other time, so far as my knowledge
extends: nor was it only the Tarentines who suffered; but the men of
Rhegium too, who had been forced to go to the aid of the Tarentines
by Micythus the son of Choerus, lost here three thousand of their
citizens; while the number of the Tarentines who fell was beyond all
count. This Micythus had been a household slave of Anaxilaus, and
was by him left in charge of Rhegium: he is the same man who was
afterwards forced to leave Rhegium, when he settled at Tegea in
Arcadia, from which place he made his many offerings of statues to the
shrine at Olympia.
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