Croton was an ancient Greek colony in Magna Graecia (southern Italy) that was established circa 710 BC. In Greek society, Croton led in Olympic titles, physics, and sobriety, and Pythagoras founded his school in Croton in 530 BC. In 510 BC, 100,000 Crotonese troops destroyed the rival city of Sybaris, and Croton sent ships to help the Greeks in the Greco-Persian Wars. However, Heraclea replaced Croton as center of the Italiote League, and Croton was conquered by Syracuse in 379 BC, being held by Syracuse for twelve years. In 306 BC, the Roman Republic conquered Croton, and it remained a part of the Roman Empire for hundreds of years. In 550, Totila and the Ostrogoths failed to take the city from the Byzantine Empire, but it would later be captured by the Arabs, and a Venetian fleet of 60 galleys and 12,000 troops failed in its attempt to recapture the city from the Arabs. In 870, the Saracens murdered the bishop and several innocent people, but the Normans conquered Crotone in the 11th century. In 1861, Croton became a part of Italy as "Cotrone", but Benito Mussolini's fascist government returned the city to its roots by renaming it to "Crotone". In 2016, the city had a population of 62,187 people.
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