The common denominations of money and weight—with the exception of the talent, the meaning of which was altered while the word was retained—seem to have been all borrowed by the Italian and Sicilian Greeks from the Sikel or Italic scale, not from the Grecian,—νούμμος, λίτρα, δεκάλιτρον, πεντεκοντάλιτρον, πεντούγκιον, ἑξᾶς, τετρᾶς, τριᾶς, ἥμινα, ἡμιλίτριον (see Fragments of Epicharmus and Sophron, ap. Ahrens de Dialecto Doricâ, Appendix, pp 435, 471, 472, and Athenæ. xi, p. 479).
[697] Thucyd. vi, 88.
[698] Thucyd. vi, 62-87; vii, 13.
[699] Cicero in Verrem, Act. ii, lib. iv, c. 26-51; Diodor. v. 6.
Contrast the manner in which Cicero speaks of Agyrium, Centuripi, and Enna, with the description of these places as inhabited by autonomous Sikels, B. C. 396, in the wars of the elder Dionysius (Diodor. xiv, 55, 58, 78). Both Sikans and Sikels were at that time completely distinguished from the Greeks, in the centre of the island.
O. Müller states that “Syracuse, seventy years after its foundation, colonized Akræ, also Enna, situated in the centre of the island,” (Hist. of Dorians, i, 6, 7). Enna is mentioned by Stephanus Byz. as a Syracusan foundation, but without notice of the date of its foundation, which must have been much later than Müller here affirms. Serra di Falco (Antichità di Sicilia, Introd. t. i, p. 9) gives Enna as having been founded later than Akræ, but earlier than Kasmenæ: for which date I find no authority. Talaria (see Steph. Byz. ad voc.) is also mentioned as another Syracusan city, of which we do not know either the date or the particulars of foundation.
[700] Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, sect. 1, p. 3.
[701] Plato, Epistol. vii, p. 326; Plautus, Rudens, Act i, Sc. 1, 56; Act ii. Sc. 6, 58.
[702] Timokreon, Fragment. 5 ap. Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, p. 478,—Σικελὸς κομψὸς ἀνὴρ Ποτὶ τὰν ματέρ᾽ ἔφα.
Bernhardy, Grundriss der Geschichte der Griech. Litteratur, vol. ii, ch. 120, sects. 2-5; Grysar, De Doriensium Comœdia, Cologne, 1828, ch. i, pp. 41, 55, 57, 210; Boeckh, De Græcæ Tragœd. Princip. p. 52; Aristot. ap. Athenæ. xi, 505. The κότταβος seems to have been a native Sikel fashion, borrowed by the Greeks (Athenæus, xv, pp. 666-668).