[2] In any case Scylletium was situated from the 6th c. BC on the east coast of Calabria (ancient Bruttium), on the shores of an extensive bay, to which it gave the name of Scylleticus Sinus.

[8] It appears during this period to have been a minor place and a mere dependency of Crotona until it was wrested from its power by the elder Dionysius, who assigned it with its territory to the Locrians.

In 124 BC the Romans, at the instigation of C. Gracchus, sent a colony to Scylletium, which appears to have assumed the name of Minervium or Colonia Minervia.

[10] The name is written by Velleius Scolatium; and the form Scolacium is found also in an inscription of the reign of Antoninus Pius, from which it appears that the place must have received a fresh colony under Nerva.

[12] Towards the close of this period it was distinguished as the birthplace of the Roman statesman Cassiodorus, founder of the Vivarium, a monastery dedicated to the coexistence of coenobitic monks and hermits, who has left us a detailed but rhetorical description of the beauty of its situation dated to around 530 AD, and fertility of its territory.