RHEGIUM re’ jĭ əm (̔Ρήγιον, G4836; modern Reggio).

The spelling is disrupted and complicated by naive ancient ideas of etymology. The Greeks, thinking of Sicily as “broken” from Italy by the seven-mile-wide Messina strait, derived the word from rhegnumi—to break. Italians favored the root “reg-” meaning “royal.” Hence the “h” or the absence of it. The name is prob. pre-Greek, and if one derivation is to be preferred to the other the Latin or Italian origin of the word is the more likely.

The town, at any rate, was a Gr. colony on the toe of the Italian peninsula opposite Messana, and was founded in 720 b.c. by Chalcis with a strong infusion of citizens from Messenia, a colony itself only a few years older.

Rhegium was originally an oligarchy, but little is known of the first two centuries of its history. Anaxilas is named as its “tyrant” (in the Gr. sense of that word) in the generation of 494 to 476 b.c., and he led the city into an era of imperialism. Thus involved in Sicilian politics, Rhegium met destruction at Syracuse’s hands in 387 b.c. Rebuilt, it is found later in control of Campanian mercenaries (280 to 270 b.c.), and successfully resisted the two conquerors Pyrrhus and Hannibal in the same cent.

As the occupant of a strategic watch-point opposite the Sicilian bridgehead into Italy Rhegium was esp. cultivated by Rome, and proved a loyal ally, receiving municipal status in 90 b.c.

Rhegium was a safe haven in a straint notoriously difficult for ancient ships to navigate (see the legends of Scylla and Charybdis). Paul’s ship having tacked widely to make Rhegium (Acts 28:13), waited under the lee of the Italian shore for a funneling S wind to drive her through the strait with its complex currents, en route to Puteoli.

Rhegium remained a Gr.-speaking city throughout imperial times, taking the name Rhegium Julium under Augustus. It was the birthplace of the poet Ibycus (mid-5th cent. b.c.).

Bibliography Strabo, 6.257f.; Herodotus 6.23; 7.165, 170; Thucydides 4, 6, 7 passim; Polybius 17; 9.7; Livy 23.30; 36.42.