History of the Peloponnesian War

There were also Phoenicians living [*]( Or, as Poppo explains it, all about the whole island. But the words immediately following are in favour of the other interpretation. Compare ch. 85. 2, καίπερ νησιώτας ὄντας καὶ εὐλήπτους, διότι ἐν χωρίοις ἐπικαίροις εἰσὶ περὶ τὴν πελοπόννησον.) around the whole of Sicily, having occupied promontories on the sea-coast, and the small islands adjacent, for purposes of trading with the Sicels: but after the Greeks sailed to it in great numbers by sea, in addition to those already there, they evacuated the greater part of them, and lived in Motya, Solois, and Panormus, near the Elymi, having united with them, both from confidence in their alliance, and because from that quarter the voyage from Sicily to Carthage is shortest. As regards barbarians, then, so many of them were there that inhabited Sicily, and in such a manner.

Of the Greeks, on the other hand, some Chalcidians of Euboea first sailed with Thucles as the leader of the colony, and founded Naxos, and built the altar to Apollo [*]( The epithet ἀρχηγέτης, or ἀρχαγέτας as the Dorians wrote the word, was given to Apollo, because the Chalcidian colony had sailed to Sicily by his direction. See Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth. V. 80. —Arnold.) Archegetes, which is now outside the city, and on which when any deputies to the games sail from Sicily, they first sacrifice.

Syracuse was founded the next year by Archias, of the family of Hercules at Corinth, after he had first expelled the Sicels from the island; on which, being no longer surrounded with water, the inner city now stands; and at a later period the outer one also was enclosed within the wall, and became populous.

Moreover, Thucles and the Chalcidians from Naxos set out in the fifth year after the founding of Syracuse, and having expelled the Sicels by arms, re—settled Leontini, and after it Catana, the Catanians themselves having chosen Evarchus as their founder.