“A custom was of old, and still remains, Which life or death by suffrages ordains: White stones and black within an urn are cast; The first absolve, but fate is in the last. The judges to the common urn bequeath Their votes, and drop the sable signs of death; The box receives all black, but, pour’d from thence, The stones came candid forth the hue of innocence. Thus Alemonides his safety won, Preserved from death by Alcumena’s son: Then to his kinsman god his vows he pays, And cuts with prosperous gales the Ionian seas: He leaves Tarentum favour’d by the wind, And Thurine bays, and Temises, behind; Soft Sybaris, and all the capes that stand Along the shore, he makes in sight of land; Still doubling, and still coasting, till he found The mouth of Aesaris, and promised ground; Then saw, where, on the margin of the flood, The tomb that held the bones of Croton stood: Here, by the gods’ command, he built, and wall’d The place predicted; and Crotona call’d. Thus fame, from time to time, delivers down The sure tradition of the Italian town.