Crotona

Crotona, a city of Lucania in ancient Italy, owed its origin to a colony of Achæans, as far back as 710 B.C. It soon became one of the most prosperous, wealthy, and powerful cities of Magna Græcia. Its walls measured 12 miles in circumference, and the territory over which it extended its sway was considerable. Its inhabitants were celebrated for athletic exercises, and they carried off most of the prizes at the Olympic games. Pythagoras settled here about the middle of the 6th century B.C., and became a very important member of the body politic (see PYTHAGORAS). About 510 B.C. Crotona sent forth an army of above 100,000 men, under Milo, its most renowned athlete, to fight the Sybarites; the latter, though three times as numerous, were utterly defeated, and their city destroyed. The war with Pyrrhus completely ruined the importance of Crotona, and in the 2d century B.C. it had sunk so low that a colony of Romans had to be sent to recruit its well-nigh exhausted population. It never afterwards recovered its prosperity. Some ruins belonging to the old exist in the vicinity of the modern city (called Cotrone, q.v.); and very fine Greek coins have been found. Cortona (q.v.) was also anciently called Crotona.