Anaxilas
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Anaxilas or Anaxilaus (Gr. Ἀναξίλας or Ἀναξίλαος), son of Cretines, was a tyrant of Rhegium (modern Reggio Calabria), and of Messenian origin. ¹ He was mas­ter of Rhegium in 494 BC, when he instigated the Samians and other Ionian fugitives to seize Zancle, a city across the strait in Sicily that was then under the rule of the tyrant Scythes.² Shortly after the Samian takeover, Anaxilas besieged the city himself, drove the Samians out, peopled it with fresh inhabitants, and changed its name to Messina, after his native Messene.³⁴

Pausanias tells a somewhat different story of this Anaxilas, that, after the second war with the Spartans, he assisted the refugees from Messana in the Peloponnese to take Zancle in Sicily.⁵

Anaxilas married Cydippe, daughter of Terillus, tyrant of Himera.² In 480 BC he ob­tained the assistance of the Carthaginians for his father-in-law, who had been expelled from his city by Theron, tyrant of Agrigentum.⁶ It was this auxiliary army that Gelo defeated at Himera. Anaxilas wanted to destroy the Locrians, but was prevented by Hiero I of Syracuse, as related by Epicharmus.²

The daughter of Anaxilas was married to Hiero.⁷ Anaxilaus died in 476 BC, leaving Micythus guardian of his children, who obtained possession of their inheritance in 467, but was soon after­wards deprived of the sovereignty by the people.⁸

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).