Croton or even Crotona (present-contemporary Crotone), in the "toe" of the Italian peninsula, was an Achaean colony from c. 710 BC on the coast of the Sinus Tarentinus (Gulf of Taranto), that became a right early city of Magna Graecia. It was notable for its resident Pythagoras & his school, the Pythagoreans, for its school of medicine and for producing numbers of generations of victors in the Olympic Games and the more Panhellenic Games. One of a best known one was Milo of Croton.

Sybaris was the competition of Croton, until c. 510 BC, Crotona sent an army of 100,000 men, commanded by the jock Milo, against Sybaris and destroyed it. Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse aiming at hegemony in Magna Graecia, temporarily held Croton. Once Pyrrhus invaded Italy it was still the considerable city. However fallowing a war by using Pyrrhus half a city became deserted. Crotona was so occupied per Brutti, with the exception of a bastion, where a primary indweller got taken refuge; these, existence unable to defend the place against a Carthaginian click, shortly fallowing relinquished, & were allowed to withdraw to Locri. Crotona in time fell into a paws of the Romans, in 193 BC, and the colony was established there.