Speeding The Search For Sybaris

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30325, 28 December 1963, Page 15

Speeding The Search For Sybaris

(By MARTIN MOORK tn the ‘ "Daily Telegraph”]

IT is nearly 25 centuries since Sybaris, wealthiest city of Colonial Greece. was wiped out in the heyday of its luxury. The army of neighbouring Crofton conquered it in a single battle, and then diverted the river Crathis to submerge every trace of the city whose name has passed into all languages as a synonym of elaborate refinement of living.

Now, after systematic searches extending over 85 years, this most richly promising site of classical antiqu.ty has at last been located with virtual certainty in she arch of Italy’s foot, near the lonian shore

Electronic instruments and new archaeological techniques of prospecting without digging have helped to establish the place But now that

they have found it, archaeoIgists are faced with a formidable problem of excavation For Sybaris is no ordinary “dig" Modern man and his ruinous satellite, the goat, brought erosion in the wake of the C roton i ate flooding Soil swept down from the denuded mountains choked the river, and the silt of centuries lies some 20ft thick over the site It long remained a swamp, and to-day the water table is only 3ft-6ft below the surface Beyond this conventional excavaition cannot go.

Water seeped rapidly into a pit sunk by Prof. Giuseppe Foti, Superintendent of Antiquities for Calabria. Seven days continuous pumping succeeded in drying it out—but once the pumps were stopped the hole flooded again within six hours. Multiply this by the whole extent of the site—the walls of Sybaris were said to be over five miles in circumference—and the magnitude of the difficulty can be gauged. To help him overcome it Prof. Foti has now called m a panel of hydraulic engineers. The pooled skills of a country with such wide experience in draining land for agricultural reclamation may be able to solve this unique ardiaeological problem. Richest Trove The ultimate reward promises also to be unique. Discount as you will the tales the Greeks told about Sybaris—of its horses trained to dance to the flute, so that in the fatal battle they waltzed away to the enemy: of its banquet-contests where cooks won a year’s copyright for their prize dishes: of the citizen Smindyrides, who went a-wooing with a kitchen staff of 1000 and complained that his bed of roses gave him blisters: of the unHellenic emancipation of Sybarite women, who paraded at festivals in toilettes which they had been given a year tn prepare

What can be sifted from the gloss of fable is the tact that Sybaris founded in 720 B C. and obliterated in 510 B C.. enjoyed a standard of material civilisation that was the envy—and reproach—of austere Hellas. It was a great trading city. Tliither flowed

the finest wares of the Greek world as well as those of Etruria, to which Sybaris commanded the overland route.

To Greek contemporaries the Sybarite way of life was reprehensible. To us, as Sir Maurice Bowra says, it "suggests almost a golden age of style and grace.” And he adds that no richer treasure-trove awaits the archaeologist. “Who would not live long enough, if he could, to see what comes to light?” asked Norman Douglas. Douglas, like Swinburne, a predictable pro-Sybarite, believed with some other modern scholars that malaria was the key to the city’s character. The supposed effeminacy of the inhabitants could have been the result of debilitating diseases. Some of their derided refinements were perhaps anti-malaria discipline. Never to see the sun rise or set sounds like a habit of sluggards; but it is also a rule of health recognising maximum danger, if not its cause, at those hours when the infecting mosquito flies. First Town-Planners So, too, the artificially shaded streets and Turkish baths (the first recorded in antiquity) reflected concern for public health rather than mere voluptuousness. The Sybarites, who banished noisy trades and crowing cocks from the city limits, can also

be recognised as the first functional town-planners, fore-runners of Roman orderlincsss.

They must have been engineers, for to handle their arge exports of wine they had a system of underground storage, with pipes to carry it to the quays. The local wine is still declared to be Calabria’s finest—“purest nectar” said Douglas, drinking deep. But it was their monopoly of trade with Etruria that made the Sybarites rich. Digging and pumping. Prof. Foti has uncovered walls of two superimposed cities—Roman Copia on foundations of Greek Thurii. Thurii was founded 67 years after the destruction of Sybaris, by a pam-Hel-lenic expedition organised by Pericles, with Herodotus among the colonists. Sybaris might be expected to lie deeper down at the same place. Thurii is specifically stated, however, to have been built near, but not on, the site of Sybaris: perahps the new colonists sought a higher spot to avoid malaria.

ELECTRONIC devices and prospectors' drills have recently pin-pointed the site of the ancient city of the Sybarites; but a massive drainage problem remains to be solved.