History of Croton (City in Italy)

The town was founded by Achaean Greeks led by Myscellus about 710 BC., ten years after the establishment of Sybaris. Like Sybaris, it soon became a city of power and wealth. Croton was an Achaean colony on the coast of the Sinus Tarentinus (Gulf of Taranto), that became a powerful early city of Magna Graecia.

Magna Graecia is the name of the area in ancient southern Italy that was colonized by ancient Greek settlers in the 8th century BC who brought with them the lasting imprint of their Hellenic civilization.

Croton was especially celebrated for its successes in the Olympic Games from 588 BC onward, Milo of Croton being the most famous of its athletes.

The original settlement occupied the hill above the harbour and later became the acropolis. Croton was the seat of a famous medical school mentioned by Herodotus. Herodotus was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus. According to him, the physicians of Croton were considered the foremost among the Greeks, and among them Democedes, son of Calliphon, was the most prominent in the 6th century BC.

In ca. 675 B.C. Croton initiated the foundation of another Achaian colony, Kaulonia. In the middle of the 6th B.C. Kroton attacked Lokroi with an army of 120,000 men but was decisively defeated at the river Sagra

In 510 BC, 100,000 Crotonese troops destroyed the rival city of Sybaris, and Croton sent ships to help the Greeks in the Greco-Persian Wars.

In 306 BC, the Roman Republic conquered Croton, and it remained a part of the Roman Empire for hundreds of years.

The town was included in the Kingdom of Naples until it was united with Italy in 1860.
History of Croton (City in Italy)