History of the Peloponnesian War

Zancle was settled, in the beginning, by pirates who came from Cyme, the Chalcidian city in Opicia; but afterwards a large number of colonists came from Chalcis and the rest of Euboea and shared the land with them, the founders being Perieres and Crataemenes, the one from Cyme, the other from Chalcis. Its name at first was Zancle, and it was so called by the Sicels because the place is sickle-shaped: for the Sicels call a sickle “zanclon.” Afterwards these settlers were driven out by Samians and other Ionians, who in their flight before the Persians landed in Sicily[*](cf. Hdt. VI. xxii., xxiii.);

but the Samians were expelled not long afterwards by Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, who colonized the place with a mixed population and changed its name to Messene[*](730 B.C.) after his own original fatherland.

Himera[*](648 B.C.) was colonized from Zancle by Eucleides, Simus and Sacon. Most of the colonists were Chalcidians; but there settled with them also fugitives from Syracuse who had been vanquished in a factional quarrel, the Myletidae as they were called. Their language was a mixture of Chalcidic and Doric, but Chalcidic institutions prevailed. Acrae and Casmenae were colonized by the Syracusans:

Acrae[*](664 B.C.) seventy years after Syracuse, Casmenae[*](644 B.C.) nearly twenty years after Acrae.