Aristotle's Account of Locri is Correct
I happened to have visited the city of the Locrians on
several occasions, and to have been the means of doing them
important services.
The traditions of the colonisation of Locri Epizephyrii agree with
the account in Aristotle, rather than with that of Timaeus. |
For it was I that secured
their exemption from the service in Iberia and
Dalmatia, which, in accordance with the treaty,
they were bound to supply to the Romans,
And being released thereby from considerable
hardship, danger, and expense, they rewarded
me with every mark of honour and kindness. I have therefore reason to speak well of the Locrians
rather than the reverse. Still I do not shrink from saying
and writing that the account of their colonisation given by
Aristotle is truer than that of Timaeus. For I know for
certain that the inhabitants themselves acknowledge that the
report of Aristotle, and not of Timaeus, is the one which they
have received from their ancestors. And they give the following proofs of this. In the first place, they stated that every
ancestral distinction existing among them is traced by the female
not the male side.
1 For instance, those are reckoned noble
among them who belong to "the hundred families"; and these
"hundred families" are those which were marked out by the
Locrians, before embarking upon their colonisation, as those
from which they were in accordance with the oracle to select the
virgins to be sent to Ilium. Further, that some of these women
joined the colony: and that it is their descendants who are
now reckoned noble, and called "the men of the hundred
families." Again, the following account of the "cup-bearing"
priestess had been received traditionally by them. When they
ejected the Sicels who occupied this part of Italy, finding that
it was a custom among them for the processions at their sacrifices to be led by a boy of the most illustrious and high-born
family obtainable, and not having any ancestral custom of their
own on the subject, they adopted this one, with no other improvement than that of substituting a girl
for one of their boys as cupbearer, because nobility with them went by the female line.