Histories

Herodotus

Herodotus. Godley, Alfred Denis, translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, Ltd., 1920-1925 (printing).

Not only this, but they sank a mass of iron in the sea, and swore never to return to Foca [26.75,38.666] (inhabited place), Izmir Ili, Ege kiyilari, Turkey, Asia Phocaea before the iron should appear again. But while they prepared to sail to Cyrnus, more than half of the citizens were overcome with longing and pitiful sorrow for the city and the life of their land, and they broke their oath and sailed back to Foca [26.75,38.666] (inhabited place), Izmir Ili, Ege kiyilari, Turkey, Asia Phocaea. Those of them who kept the oath put out to sea from the Oenussae.

And when they came to Cyrnus they lived there for five years as one community with those who had come first, and they founded temples there. But they harassed and plundered all their neighbors, as a result of which the Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians made common cause against them, and sailed to attack them with sixty ships each.

The Phocaeans also manned their ships, sixty in number, and met the enemy in the sea called Sardonian. They engaged and the Phocaeans won, yet it was only a kind of Cadmean victory;[*](Polynices and Eteocles, sons of Oedipus and descendants of Cadmus, fought for the possession of Thebes [23.3333,38.325] (Perseus) Thebes and killed each other. Hence a Cadmean victory means one where victor and vanquished suffer alike.) for they lost forty of their ships, and the twenty that remained were useless, their rams twisted awry.

Then sailing to Aleria [9.5,42.83] (inhabited place), Haute-Corse, Corsica, France, Europe Alalia they took their children and women and all of their possessions that their ships could hold on board, and leaving Cyrnus they sailed to Reggio di Calabria [15.65,38.1] (inhabited place), Reggio di Calabria, Calabria, Italy, EuropeRhegium.