Talk:Sybaris

Untitled
Sybiratic redirects here... which I'm sure isn't the correct page? 84.69.67.45 22:19, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Sybiratic is not a word afaik. If you mean Sybaritic, then yes, it is the correct page. Venetian 08:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Chamber pots
The Sybarites invented the chamber pot. Source: "Temples of Convenience and Chambers of Delight" by Lucinda Lambton, 1995. To quote: "'The chamber pot had been invented by the Sybarites because they would not be at the trouble of moving'. So wrote the Revd Thomas Dudley Fosbroke in his Encyclopedia of Antiquities in 1825. ...How could it be that it is known who created the first chamber pot? With the help of a classicist friend, Rowland Smith, I ran the source to ground in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and will never forget the words as they were crisply and clearly translated from their original Greek: '...They too, were the first ot invent chamber pots, which they carried to their drinking parties'."

So yea... I would incorporate that into the article but I don't know where and I've got a paper to write right now.EunuchOmerta 04:00, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I would be curious to know the source. I spent days on this article but haven't read anything in the sources about chamber pots. AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 00:00, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Out of date
I hate to say it, but this sounds more out of date than ANYTHING from The 1911 EB! 68.39.174.238 (talk) 23:27, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

"The Search for Sybaris" by Orville H. Bullitt
This article should use the material in this book published in 1969 by J.B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia and New York. This work covers about a 10 year test and dig of the area. These digs determined the location mentioned in this article. The book includes marvelous accounts of the opulence of the inhabitants from classical sources.

Their enormous wealth was supported by export and import trade with Athens, Corinth and other mainland cities. The main trade was with Miletus and the Etruscans. From Sybaris goods were taken overland to Paestum, Laus or Cosenza ports and picked up by Etruscan ships. This protected trade from pirates of Syracuse, Messina and Carthage.

My favorite passages are from the year the city fell. (This is my summary). Pages 80 onward describe the fall of the city. Telys had persuaded the populous to prosecute the richest men. A tribunal exiled 500 of the richest men and confiscated all their property. The 500 took refuge at an altar in the marketplace of Croton, a nearby city. Telys sent ambassadors to demand their return on threat of war. Pythagoras who was a resident of Croton at that time argued against their return to Sybaris. Croton sent 30 ambassadors/leaders back to Sybaris, where Telys had them killed and thrown over the city walls to wolves.

The statue of Hera poured forth blood so copiously that the doors to her temple had to be closed to avoid having the city drenched. Then the mob overthrew the current rulers and had them and Telys killed on the steps of the altar, again incurring wrath of the gods for the desecration of the altar. It doesn't say which god's altar. By offending the gods the city was destined to fall.

Glenn A. Turner (talk) 23:14, 25 October 2008 (UTC) Glenn A. Turner

dancing horses
Is there a reference for the dancing horses story? I've been unable to date it to before the 19th century. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.45.27.53 (talk) 01:33, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Added a reference from Deipnosophistae. AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 21:42, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Further suggestions for improvement
I just modified the references so that they make more sense to the general public, The abbreviations used in the article, taken from this article here in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography are not understandable for the uninitiated. I also: AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 21:47, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Removed the nbsp; and ndash; sequences which had somehow gotten into the text (only visible in the source).
 * Changed the reference to Henry Swinburne, it's on different pages in the version I found on Google Books
 * Changed the reference to Scymnus to be Pseudo-Scymnus
 * The reference to the website of the law firm doesn't mention street lighting. After a long search I found no source for the claim that Sybaris had street lighting, so I removed the claim. I also removed the reference, which was unsuitable anyway.
 * Gathered some more secondary literature:
 * Geometric Greece: 900-700 BC
 * Miletos, the Ornament of Ionia: A History of the City to 400 B.C.E.
 * Diodorus Siculus, Books 11-12.37.1: Greek History 480-431 B.C.
 * Collected Papers on Greek Colonization

Some remaining issues with the references
I just finished converting all references to named references so that the clutter in the source text is reduced significantly. However, there are still some issues: AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 10:58, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * FIXED What about the reference to Timaeus? Can't find an English translation and I have no idea what "ap" means.
 * What about the reference to the Suda? Can't find an English translation for that either, Suda On Line finds nothing when I search for the Greek text given in the reference.
 * FIXED What about the reference to Athenaeus 521 concerning the public games of the Sybarites? In the English translation we read nothing about these public games in that line, but a part of the line seems to be missing in that translation. Does anyone happen to know a more complete translation, or could anyone provide the content of that line taken from a non-public domain translation, or translate from the Greek text himself?
 * As I've said on the talk page for the article on Pseudo-Scymnus already, I would really like to have an English translation of the Periodos to Nicomedes online somewhere so we can verify the references to that work.

AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 16:46, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The issue of the reference to Atheneaus regarding the Olympic Games has been fixed because the translation on the Attalus website simply isn't complete. Now I've linked to the scanned original of the translation, which does include that line.
 * Regarding the reference to Samuel Johnson's dictionary, I can't seem to find an entry on the word sybarite here at all?

AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 11:21, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Read apud in wiktionary, it means Timaeus is cited by Athenaeus, but considering this is clear because Atheneaus explicitly says so I removed it.
 * Just expanded the sections on the foundation and the sixth century.
 * I'm going to make an English article for Sibari so people looking for that place won't arrive here.

Comments on anonymous edits in March 2013

 * Referring the the settlement as a colony instead of a city is strange, there were so many cities in classical antiquity which started as colonies. Yet, we almost always refer to these settlements as cities on Wikipedia. The fact that it was a colony is already mentioned in the History section. Especially the fact that it founded colonies itself makes it wrong to refer to Sybaris primarily as a colony.
 * Calabria didn't exist in Antiquity, back then it was called Bruttium. However, after giving it some thought, Bruttium didn't exist yet at the time Sybaris was founded. Magna Graecia is the most accurate name and I'll change it so accordingly.
 * Mentioning it is located on "the very southern end" of the Italian peninsula seems superfluous because the map and the mention of the province should give a very good idea of the location already. Such a description makes the sentence longer without adding much of value.
 * I agree with the comments on the fertility of the land and the wealth in the lead section, but attributing this to the weather seems quite far-fetched. Sybaris didn't have a microclimate as far as we know, given that the climate was probably more or less the same for other cities in this region you can't attribute its prosperity to the weather.--AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 11:26, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Sybarite
I am thinking about creating a separate page for Sybarite. The things we all know on the subject are "sybarites" with their "sybaritic luxury", etc., while the knowledge of the (anecdotal) city history is not widespread. So a separate article might be warranted for sybarites as symbols of luxury and hubris. There are plenty of high-quality sources discussing the proverbial substance of "sybarite" As a couple of examples I would point to: The first one is a typical example of analysis of texts that are responsible for creating the proverbial status of citizens of Sybaris, the second is an example of the modern meaning of the word, tracing the path from the sybaritic past to the modern fashion shows (there are a lot of works in-between). This is a request for comment on the viability of creating a new page. Multiple articles in other languages already exist, see Q21129726. Викидим (talk) 02:58, 29 March 2023 (UTC)