The ever increasing wealth of Sybaris inevitably bred an indolent upper class devoted to self-indulgence. Anticipating our oil pipelines and aqueducts, they are said to have piped wine from their country estates to wine cellars near the sea shore, whence it was carried to the city in boats. Streets leading into the country were roofed over to protect travelers from the excessive heat of the sun. For instance, they banned noisy occupations like blacksmithing, carpentry, and chicken-raising from the confines of the city. Ancient writers stress in a rather puritanical matter the luxurious way of life of the Sybarites, but some of their practices seem quite reasonable to modern city dwellers. The picture we see of Sybaris at her peak is a colorful one. It would appear that trade between the Ionian Greeks and the Etruscans was amicably and profitably handled by the Sybarites, for it is said that they came to like the Etruscans among the people of Italy, while among the people of the East they liked the Ionians, because (as Athenaeus remarks disparagingly) both were devoted to luxury. An important factor in her prosperity was the fact that she lay at the southern end of overland trade routes leading north and west to her colonies on the Tyrrhenian side of Italy, the most famous of which was Poseidonia (Paestum). Building their city between the Crathis (modern Crati) and Sybaris (modern Coscile) rivers on a vast and fertile coastal plain in northern Calabria, the Sybarites prospered rapidly by agriculture and trade, and grew mightily in numbers, largely by controlling or granting citizenship to members of the native tribes of the interior. One of the earliest of the Greek settlements in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy and Sicily), Sybaris was founded about 720 B.C. The brief but fascinating history of Sybaris, its importance, and its approximate location can be pieced together from the writings of a number of classical authors, chiefly Athenaeus, Diordorus Siculus, Herodotus, Pliny, and Strabo. In order that the reader may understand why we had to use such unorthodox methods, a fair amount of background information is presented first. This article is a report of the novel methods used in 1962 by the UniversityВ MuseumВ in prospecting for thisВ elusiveВ city. But long before the beginning of modern archaeological research Sybaris had become a lost city, a square mile of buildings buried without a trace somewhere in the silt of an eighty square mile alluvial plain. Famed ever since antiquity for its great wealth and luxury (our expressions вЂњsybariteвЂќ and вЂњsybaritic banquetвЂќ acknowledge this fact), Sybaris has held the attention of historians and archaeologists for many centuries. The hill town at the left is Corigliano.Дown in the foot of Italy, or more accurately under the instep and facing the blue Ionian sea, lies the Greek city of SybarisвЂ“virtually untouched by the archaeologistвЂ™s spade.

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