History of the Peloponnesian War

Zancle was first built by pirates that came from Cume, a Chalcidean city in Opicia; but afterwards there came a multitude, and helped to people it, out of Chalcis and the rest of Euboea; and their conductors were Perieres and Crataemenes, one of Cume, the other of Chalcis. And the name of the city was at first Zancle, so named by the Sicilians because it hath the form of a sickle, and the Sicilians call a sickle zanclon. But these inhabitants were afterwards chased thence by the Samians and other people of Ionia that in their flight from the Medes fell upon Sicily.

After this, Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, drave out the Samians, and peopling the city with a mixed people of them and his own, instead of Zancle called the place by the name of his own country from whence he was anciently descended, Messana.

After Zancle was built Himera, by Eucleides, Simus, and Sacon, the most of which colony were Chalcideans; but there were also amongst them certain outlaws of Syracuse, the vanquished part of a sedition, called the Myletidae. Their language grew to a mean between the Chalcidean and Doric; but the laws of the Chalcidean prevailed.

Acrae and Casmenae were built by the Syracusians, Acrae twenty years after Syracuse, and Casmenae almost twenty after Acrae.