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In 510 B.C. two of the most prosperous cities of the Western Greeks went to war. Croton was an Achaean foundation and the proverbially wealthy Sybaris was originally founded jointly from Achaea and Troezen; the immediate cause of the war seems to have been a local quarrel and is rather unclear, but there was a history of rivalry. The army of Croton was commanded by the hefty and redoubtable Milo who was appointed general after an astonishing record of success in the international wrestling ring (over thirty major crowns and five times a victor at all four great Games on ‘the circuit'). He now showed that he could be just as ruthless in a real battle and the results for Sybaris were disastrous; the city was destroyed, the inhabitants dispersed, and the site obliterated by the diversion of a local river, the Crathis. On two subsequent occasions the erstwhile citizens attempted with remarkable tenacity to refound Sybaris in the same area (by the second attempt, this must have been undertaken by the children and even the grandchildren of the original citizens), but Croton, still nervous of rivalry, successfully eliminated both attempts at settlement.

There is still some confusion over the literary evidence for the methods by which children and others learnt to write in the ancient world. There are four main sources: the analogy between the methods of the grammatistes and the function of the laws in Plato, Protagoras 326c–d, three passages in Quintilian (1. 1. 27; 5. 14. 31; 10. 2. 2), a passage from one of Seneca's letters (Ep. 94. 51) and a short analogy in Maximus of Tyre (p. 20 Hobein, lines 13-16).

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