Sila
Frieze-Dennison Vergil
- a large forest in the country of the Bruttii, which yielded great quantities of pitch, Cic. Brut. 22, 85; Sall. Fragm. ap. Serv. Verg. A. 12, 715 (H. 4, 7 Dietsch); Plin. 3, 5, 10, § 74; Verg. G. 3, 219; id. A. 12, 715.
- —Hence, Sīlānus, a, um, adj., of or belonging to the forest of Sila: caseus, Cassiod. Var. 12, 12.
SILA (ἡ Σίλα: Sila) was the name given in ancient times to a part of the Apennines in the S. of Bruttium, which were clothed with dense forests, and furnished abundance of pitch, as well as timber for ship-building. Strabo tells us it was 700 stadia (70 geog. miles) in length, and places its commencement in the neighbourhood of Locri. (Strab. 6. p. 261.) It is evident, therefore, that he, as well as Pliny (Plin. Nat. 3.5. s. 10), who notices it in connection with Rhegium and Leucopetra, assigned the name to the southernmost group of the Apennines (the range of Aspromonte), S. of the isthmus which separates the Terinaean and Scylletic gulfs. At the present day the name of Sila is given only to the detached and outlying mountain group N. of that isthmus, and E. of Cosenza (Consentia.) It is probable that the name, which evidently means only the forest,a nd is connected with the Latin silva, and the Greek ὕλη, was originally applied in a more general sense to all the forest-covered mountains of this part of Calabria, though now restricted to the group in question. [E.H.B]