Editing Sybaris (section)

=== Legacy ===
Unlike Herodotus, Diodorus and earlier ancient Greek writers, later authors from the [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] period denounced the Sybarites. Aelianus, Strabo and especially Athenaeus saw the destruction of Sybaris as divine vengeance upon the Sybarites for their pride, arrogance, and excessive luxury. Athenaeus is the richest source for anecdotes about the Sybarites. According to him they invented the [[chamber pot]] and pioneered the concept of [[intellectual property]] to ensure that cooks could exclusively profit from their signature dishes for a whole year. They always travelled in [[chariots]], but would still take three days for a journey of one day. The roads to villas in the countryside were roofed over and canals transported wine from vineyards to cellars near the sea.{{sfn|Athenaeus|1854|loc=[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Ath.+12.17 12.17], [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Ath.+12.20 12.20]}} A fragment of the comedian Metagenes he quotes has a Sybarite boasting about literal rivers of food flowing through the city.<ref>[https://www.loebclassics.com/view/metagenes-testimonia_fragments/2011/pb_LCL514.361.xml METAGENES, ''Testimonia and Fragments'']</ref>

Not only does Athenaeus provide a great deal of examples to show the decadence of Sybarites, but he also argues that their excessive luxury and sins led to their doom. According to Athenaeus ambassadors of the Sybarites (one of whom was named [[Amyris of Sybaris|Amyris]]) consulted the [[Pythia|oracle of Delphi]], who prophesied that war and internal conflict awaited them if they would honour man more than the gods.{{sfn|Athenaeus|1854|loc=[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Ath.+12.18 12.18]}} Later he cites [[Phylarchus]], who wrote that the Sybarites invoked the anger of Hera when they murdered thirty ambassadors from Kroton and left them unburied. He also cites [[Heraclides Ponticus|Herakleides]] as attributing the divine wrath to the murder of supporters of Telys on the altars of the gods. Herakleides supposedly mentioned that the Sybarites attempted to supplant the [[Ancient Olympic Games|Olympic Games]] by attracting the athletes to their own public games with greater prizes.{{sfn|Athenaeus|1854|loc=[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Ath.+12.21 12.21]}} The most direct link between luxury and corruption is evident in Athenaeus' anecdote about the defeat of the Sybarites: to amuse themselves the Sybarite cavalrymen trained their horses to dance to flute music. When the Krotoniate army had their flute players make music the horses of the Sybarites ran over to the Krotoniates along with their riders.{{sfn|Athenaeus|1854|loc=[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Ath.+12.19 12.19]}} Strabo gives the "luxury and insolence" of the Sybarites as the reason for their defeat.{{sfn|Strabo|1924|loc=[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Strab.+6.1.13 6.1.13]}} Claudius Aelianus attributes the fall of Sybaris to its luxury and the murder of a [[lute]]nist at the altar of Hera.{{sfn|Claudius Aelianus|1665|loc=[http://penelope.uchicago.edu/aelian/varhist1.xhtml#chap19 1.19], [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/aelian/varhist3.xhtml#chap43 3.43]}}

Vanessa Gorman gives no credence to these accounts because grave sins followed by divine retribution were stock elements of fiction at the time.{{sfn|Gorman|2001|p=[http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015053540293;view=2up;seq=115 106]}} Furthermore, she and Robert Gorman point to Athenaeus as the origin of the embellished accounts rather than the historians he cited. He altered details of the original accounts, disguised his own contributions as those of past historians and invented new information to fit his argument that luxury leads to catastrophe. This concept was called [[tryphé]] and was a popular belief in his time, at the turn of the 2nd century AD.{{sfn|Gorman|Gorman|2007|p=47–54, 59}} Peter Green likewise argues that these accounts are most likely the inventions of moralists. He points out the vast natural wealth of the city was the more likely reason it was attacked by Kroton.{{sfn|Diodorus Siculus|2010|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=InAjXetbsBkC&pg=PA190 189–190]|loc=footnote 43}}

This association of Sybaris with excessive luxury transferred to the [[English language]], in which the words "sybarite" and "sybaritic" have become bywords for opulent luxury and outrageous pleasure seeking. One story, mentioned in [[Samuel Johnson]]'s ''[[A Dictionary of the English Language]]'', alludes to Aelianus' anecdote about Smindyrides. It mentions a Sybarite sleeping on a bed of rose petals, but unable to get to sleep because one of the petals was folded over.{{sfn|Johnson|1830|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=TzZAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA907 907]}}