te 6: Epist. XIV. ad Rusticum et Sebastianum (Migne, p. 49).]

[Footnote 7: Nearly all the letters in the XIth and XIIth Books of the
Variae are headed 'Senator Praefectus Praetorio.']

[Sidenote: Birthplace, Scyllacium.]

(2) Scyllacium, the modern Squillace, was, according to Cassiodorus,
the first, either in age or in importance, of the cities of Bruttii, a
Province which corresponds pretty closely with the modern Calabria. It
is situated at the head of the gulf to which it gives its name, on the
eastern side of Italy, and at the point where the peninsula is pinched
in by the Tyrrhene and Ionian Seas to a width of only fifteen miles,
the narrowest dimensions to which it is anywhere reduced. The Apennine
chain comes here within a distance of about five miles of the sea, and
upon one of its lower dependencies Scyllacium was placed. The slight
promontory in front of the town earned for it from the author of the
Aeneid the ominous name of 'Navifragum Scylaceum[8].' In the
description which Cassiodorus himself gives of his birthplace (Var.
xii. 15) we hear nothing of the danger to mariners which had attracted
the attention of Virgil, possibly a somewhat timid sailor. The name,
however, given to the place by the Greek colonists who founded it,
_Scylletium_, is thought by some to contain an allusion to dangers of
the coast similar to those which were typified by the barking dogs of
the not far distant Scylla.

[Footnote 8:

'Adtollit se diva Lacinia contra,
Caulonisque arces, et navifragum Scylaceum.'

(iii. 552-3.)]

[Sidenote: The Greek city.]

According to Cassiodorus, this Greek city was founded by Ulysses after
the destruction of Troy. Strabo[9] attributes the foundation of it to
the almost equally widespread energy of Menestheus. The form of the
name makes it probable that the colonists were in any case of Ionian
descent; but in historic times we find Scylletion subject to the
domineering Achaian city of Crotona, from whose grasp it was wrested
(B.C. 389) by the elder Dionysius. It no doubt shared in the general
decay of the towns of this part of Magna Graecia consequent on the
wars of Dionysius and Agathocles, and may very probably, like Crotona,
have been taken and laid waste by the Bruttian banditti in the Second
Punic War. During the latter part of this war Hannibal seems to have
occupied a position near to, but not in, the already ruined city, and
its port was known long after as Castra