SYBARIS, a city of Magna Graecia, on the Gulf of Tarentum, between the rivers Crathis (Crati) and Sybaris (Coscile), which now meet 3 miles from the sea, but anciently had independent mouths, was the oldest Greek colony in this region. It was an Achaean colony founded by Isus of Helice (720 b.c.), but had among its settlers many Troezenians, who were ultimately expelled. Placed in a very fertile, though now most unhealthy, region, and following a liberal policy in the admission of citizens from all quarters, the city became great and opulent, with a vast subject territory and divers daughter colonies even on the Tyrrhenian Sea (Posidonia, Laus, Scidrus). For magnificence and luxury the Sybarites were proverbial throughout Greece, and in the 6th century probably no Hellenic city could compare with its wealth and splendour. At length contests between the democrats and oligarchs, in which many of the latter were expelled and took refuge at Crotona, led to a war with that city, and the Crotoniats with very inferior forces were completely victorious. They razed Sybaris to the ground and turned the waters of Crathis to flow over its ruins (510 b.c.). Explorations undertaken by the Italian Government in 1879 have failed to lead to a precise knowledge of the site.

See Academy, vol. xvit p. 73 (24th January 1880); Lenoπnant, La Grande-Grèce (1881), i. 325 sq. ; and Thurii.

συκάμινος, in Arabic _sokam_, Luke xvii, 6. This is a different tree from the sycamore, mentioned Luke xix, 4. Dioscorides says that this tree is the mulberry, though he allows that some apprehend that it is the same with the sycamore. Galen has a separate article on the _sycamorus_, which he speaks of as rare, and mentions as having seen it at Alexandria in Egypt. The Greeks name the _morus_ the sycamine. Grotius says the word συκάμινος has no connection with συκέη, _the fig-tree_, but is entirely Syrian, שקמין, in Hebrew, שקמים. It should seem, indeed, to be very similar to the mulberry, as not only the Latin, but the Syriac and the Arabic, render it by _morus_; and thus Coverdale’s, the Rheim’s, and Purver’s English translations render it by the mulberry; and so it is in Bishop Wilson’s Bible.

SYCAMORE. See Fig, vol. ix. p. 154, and Maple, vol. XV. p. 524.

שקמות, שקמים, 1 Kings x, 27; 1 Chron. xxvii, 28; 2 Chron. i, 15; Psalm lxxviii, 47; Isa. ix, 9; Amos viii, 14; συκομορέα, Luke xix, 4; a large tree, according to the description of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Galen, resembling the mulberry-tree in the leaf, and the fig in its fruit; hence its name, compounded of συκέη _fig_, and μόρος, _mulberry_; and some have fancied that it was originally produced by ingrafting the one tree upon the other. Its fruit is palatable. When ripe it is soft, watery, somewhat sweet, with a little of an aromatic taste. The trees are very common in Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt; grow large, and to a great height; and though their grain is coarse are much used in building. To change sycamores into cedars, Isa. ix, 10, means, to render the buildings of cities, and the state of the nation, much more magnificent than before. Dr. Shaw remarks, that as the grain and texture of the sycamore is remarkably coarse and spongy, it could therefore stand in no competition at all with the cedar for beauty and ornament. We meet with the same opposition of cedars to sycamores in 1 Kings x, 27, where Solomon is said to have made silver as the stones, and cedars as the sycamores of the vale for abundance. “By this _mashal_, or figurative and sententious speech,” says Bishop Lowth, “they boast, in this place of Isaiah, that they shall be easily able to repair their present losses, suffered, perhaps, by the first Assyrian invasion under Tiglath-Pileser, and to bring their affairs to a more flourishing condition than ever.” The wood of this tree is very durable. “The mummy chests,” says Dr. Shaw, “and whatever figures and instruments of wood are found in the catacombs, are all of them of sycamore, which, though spongy ...