Syracuse, Italy in the context of "Rhinthon"

Corax (Greek: Κόραξ, Korax; fl. 5th century BC) was one of the founders (along with Tisias) of ancient Greek rhetoric. Some scholars contend that both founders are merely legendary personages, others that Corax and Tisias were the same person, described in one fragment as "Tisias, the Crow" (corax is ancient Greek for "crow"). And according to Aristotle, Empedocles was the actual founder of rhetoric, but this is also unlikely. It is believed that William Shakespeare derived the name Sycorax from Corax of Syracuse. Corax is said to have lived in Sicily, Magna Graecia, in the 5th century BC, when Thrasybulus, tyrant of Syracuse, was overthrown and a democracy formed.

Gylippus (/dʒɪˈlɪpəs/; Greek: Γύλιππος) was a Spartan general (strategos) of the 5th century BC; he was the son of Cleandridas, who was the adviser of King Pleistoanax and had been expelled from Sparta for accepting Athenian bribes in 446 BC and fled to Thurii, a pan-Hellenic colony then being founded in the instep of Italy with Athenian help and participation. His mother may have been a helot, which meant he was not a true Spartiate but a mothax, a man of inferior status. Despite this, from an early childhood he was trained for war in the traditional Spartan fashion and on reaching maturity had been elected to a military mess, his dues contributed by a wealthier Spartiate patron. For an individual of marginal origins, war was an opportunity to gain honor and eminence.

When Alcibiades urged the Spartans to send a general to lead the Syracusan resistance against the Athenian expedition, Gylippus was appointed (414 BC), his arrival was a turning point of the struggle. More daring than Nicias, the Athenian commander he faced, he was able to gain an upper hand by driving the Athenians from key strategic locations and essentially breaking the siege. When Athens sent Demosthenes with reinforcements, he too was defeated by Gylippus, which ultimately led to the downfall of the Athenian campaign in Syracuse.

Hermocrates (/hɜːrˈmɒkrəˌtiːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἑρμοκράτης, romanized: Hermokrátēs, c. 5th century – 407 BC) was an ancient Syracusan general from Greek Sicily during the Athenians' Sicilian Expedition in the midst of the Peloponnesian War. He is also remembered as a character in the Timaeus and Critias dialogues of Plato.

Tancred (fl. 1104) was the Count of Syracuse and a member of the Hauteville family. He was appointed by his relative Roger I of Sicily to govern one of the first and only feudal counties created in Sicily after the Norman conquest. His predecessor was Roger's son, Jordan. His descendant, Simon, still ruled Syracuse in the middle of the twelfth century.

Simon (fl. 1162) was the Norman Count of Syracuse and a member of the Hauteville family. He may be an illegitimate son of Roger II of Sicily, but more likely a son of Henry, Count of Paterno, the brother-in-law of Roger I. He was probably a descendant of his predecessor Tancred.

In 1162, when Frederick Barbarossa was seeking allies for a planned invasion of the Kingdom of Sicily, he made a treaty with the Republic of Genoa, offering them the entire Ligurian coast and the lands of Simon in Sicily. These lands included the cities of Syracuse and Noto and 250 knight's fees (caballariae) in the fertile plain around Noto, the Val di Noto. When the Emperor Henry VI reissued his father's charter to Genoa on 30 May 1191, he retained the promise of Simon's lands, even though Simon was by then dead.

Tenea (Greek: Τενέα) is a municipal unit within the municipality of Corinth, Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. The municipal unit has an area of 167.575 km (64.701 sq mi). Until 2011, its municipal seat was in Chiliomodi.

The modern city is named after ancient Tenea, established approximately 15 km (9.3 mi) southeast of Corinth and 20 km (12 mi) northeast of Mycenae shortly after the Trojan War. According to Pausanias, Tenea's founders were Trojan prisoners of war whom Agamemnon had allowed to build their own town. The name Tenea is styled upon Tenedos, the founders' hometown, whose mythological eponym was the hero Tenes. Tenea and Rome, according to Virgil's Aeneid, had in the years following the Trojan War produced citizens of Trojan ancestry. Under the leadership of Archias in 734 or 733 BC, Teneans and Corinthians established the joint colony of Syracuse in Sicily, the homeland of Archimedes.

Hicetas (Ancient Greek: Ἱκέτας or Ἱκέτης; c. 400 – c. 335 BC) was a Greek philosopher of the Pythagorean School. He was born in Syracuse, Magna Graecia. Like his fellow Pythagorean Ecphantus and the Academic Heraclides Ponticus, he believed that the daily movement of permanent stars was caused by the rotation of the Earth around its axis. When Copernicus referred to Nicetus Syracusanus (Nicetus of Syracuse) in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium as having been cited by Cicero as an ancient who also argued that the Earth moved, it is believed that he was actually referring to Hicetas.

Cicero refers to Hicetas in the Academica, volume II, citing in turn Theophrastus. According to Heath: