In Proof, They Say That If You Dig Near
Tarsia Below The Present River-Level, You Will Pass Through Beds Of Silt
And Ooze To Traces Of Old Walls And Cultivated Land.
Tarsia used to lie
by the river-side, and was a flourishing place, according to the
descriptions of Leandro Alberti and other early writers; floods and
malaria have now forced it to climb the hills.
The current of the Crati is more spasmodic and destructive than in
classical times when the river was "navigable"; and to one of its
inundations may be due this legend of the deluge; to the same
one, maybe, that affected the courses of this river and the Coscile,
mingling their waters which used to flow separately into the Ionian. Or
it may be a hazy memory of the artificial changing of the riverbed when
the town of Sybaris, lying between these two rivers, was destroyed. Yet
the streams are depicted as entering the sea apart in old maps such as
those of Magini, Fiore, Coronelli, and Cluver; and the latter writes
that "near the mouth of the Crati there flows into the same sea a river
vulgarly called Cochile." [Footnote: In the earlier part of
Rathgeber's astonishing "Grossgriechenland und Pythagoras" (1866) will
be found a good list of old maps of the country.]
This is important. It remains to be seen whether this statement is the
result of a personal visit, or whether he simply repeated the old
geography. His text in many places indicates a personal acquaintance
with southern Italy - Italian, says Heinsius, non semel
peragravit - and he may well have been tempted to investigate a site
like that of Sybaris.
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