[691] Thucydid. vi, 4.
[692] Strabo, vi, p. 272.
[693] Stephanus Byz. Σικανία, ἡ περίχωρος Ἀκραγαντινῶν. Herodot. vii, 170; Diodor. iv, 78.
Vessa, the most considerable among the Sikanian townships or villages, with its prince Teutus, is said to have been conquered by Phalaris despot of Agrigentum, through a mixture of craft and force (Polyæn. v, 1, 4).
[694] Of these Sikel or Sikan caverns many traces yet remain: see Otto Siefert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, pp. 39, 45, 49, 55, and the work of Captain W. H. Smyth,—Sicily and its Islands, London, 1824, p. 190.
“These cryptæ (observes the latter) appear to have been the earliest effort of a primitive and pastoral people towards a town, and are generally without regularity as to shape and magnitude: in after-ages they perhaps served as a retreat in time of danger, and as a place of security in case of extraordinary alarm, for women, children, and valuables. In this light, I was particularly struck with the resemblance these rude habitations bore to the caves I had seen in Owhyhee, for similar uses. The Troglodyte villages of Northern Africa, of which I saw several, are also precisely the same.”
About the early cave-residences in Sardinia and the Balearic islands, consult Diodor. v, 15-17.
[695] Thucydid. vi, 45. τὰ περιπόλια τὰ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ (of Syracuse).
[696] Respecting the statical and monetary system, prevalent among the Italian and Sicilian Greeks, see Aristot. Fragment. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ed. Neumann, p. 102; Pollux, iv, 174, ix, 80-87; and above all, Boeckh, Metrologie, ch. xviii, p. 292, and the abstract and review of that work in the Classical Museum, No. 1; also, O. Müller, Die Etrusker, vol. i, p. 309.
The Sicilian Greeks reckoned by talents, each consisting of 120 litræ or libræ: the Æginæan obolus was the equivalent of the litra, having been the value in silver of a pound-weight of copper, at the time when the valuation was taken.