Siris (Magna Graecia)

Siris (Greek: Σῖρις) was an ancient city of Magna Graecia (in modern southern Italy), situated at the mouth of the river of the same name flowing into the Tarentine gulf, and now called the Sinni.

Siris was a Greek colony which at one time attained to a great amount of wealth and prosperity; however, its history is extremely obscure and uncertain. Its first origin was generally ascribed to a Trojan colony; and, as a proof of this, an ancient statue of Minerva was shown there which claimed to be the true Trojan Palladium. Whatever may have been the origin of this legend, there seems no doubt that Siris was originally a city of the Chones, the native Oenotrian inhabitants of this part of Italy. A legend found in the Etymologicon, according to which the city derived its name from a daughter of Morges, king of the Siculi, evidently points in the same direction, as the Morgetes also were an Oenotrian tribe. From these first settlers it was wrested, as we are told, by a body of Ionian colonists from Colophon, who had fled from their native city to avoid the dominion of the Lydians. The period of this emigration is very uncertain; but it appears probable that it must have taken place not long after the capture of the city by Gyges, king of Lydia, about 700-690 BCE.

Archilochus, writing about 660 BCE, alludes to the fertility and beauty of the district on the banks of the Siris; and though the fragment preserved to us by Athenaeus does not expressly notice the existence of the city of that name, yet it would appear from the expressions of Athenaeus that the poet certainly did mention it; and the fact of this colony having been so lately established there was doubtless the cause of his allusion to it. On the other hand, it seems clear from the account of the settlement at Metapontum, that the territory of Siris was at that time still unoccupied by any Greek colony. We may therefore probably place the date of the Ionian settlement at Siris between 690 and 660 BCE. We are told that the Ionic colonists gave to the city the name of Polieum; but the appellation of Siris, which it derived from the river, and which seems to have been often given to the whole district (ἡ Σῖρις, used as equivalent to ἡ Σιρῖτις), evidently prevailed, and is the only one met with in common use.

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