The stream of Grecian colonization to the westward, as far as we can be said to know it authentically, with names and dates, begins from the 11th Olympiad. But it is reasonable to believe that there were other attempts earlier than this, though we must content ourselves with recognizing them as generally probable. There were doubtless detached bands of volunteer emigrants or marauders, who, fixing themselves in some situation favorable to commerce or piracy, either became mingled with the native tribes, or grew up by successive reinforcements into an acknowledged town. Not being able to boast of any filiation from the prytaneium of a known Grecian city, these adventurers were often disposed to fasten upon the inexhaustible legend of the Trojan war, and ascribe their origin to one of the victorious heroes in the host of Agamemnôn, alike distinguished for their valor and for their ubiquitous dispersion after the siege. Of such alleged settlements by fugitive Grecian or Trojan heroes, there were a great number, on various points throughout the shores of the Mediterranean; and the same honorable origin was claimed even by many non-Hellenic towns.

In the eighth century B. C., when this westerly stream of Grecian colonization begins to assume an authentic shape (735 B. C.), the population of Sicily—as far as our scanty information permits us to determine it—consisted of two races completely distinct from each other—Sikels and Sikans—besides the Elymi, a mixed race apparently distinct from both, and occupying Eryx and Egesta, near the westernmost corner of the island,—and the Phenician colonies and coast establishments formed for purposes of trade. According to the belief both of Thucydidês and Philistus, these Sikans, though they gave themselves out as indigenous, were yet of Iberian origin[650] and emigrants of earlier date than the Sikels,—by whom they had been invaded and restricted to the smaller western half of the island, and who were said to have crossed over originally from the south-western corner of the Calabrian peninsula, where a portion of the nation still dwelt in the time of Thucydidês. The territory known to Greek writers of the fifth century B. C. by the names of Œnotria on the coast of the Mediterranean, and Italia on that of the gulfs of Tarentum and Squillace, included all that lies south of a line drawn across the breadth of the country, from the gulf of Poseidônia (Pæstum) and the river Silarus on the Mediterranean sea, to the north-west corner of the gulf of Tarentum; it was also bounded northwards by the Iapygians and Messapians, who occupied the Salentine peninsula, and the country immediately adjoining to Tarentum, and by the Peuketians on the Ionic gulf. According to the logographers Pherekydês and Hellanikus,[651] Œnotrus and Peuketius were sons of Lykaôn, grandsons of Pelasgus, and emigrants in very early times from Arcadia to this territory. An important statement in Stephanus Byzantinus[652] acquaints us that the serf-population, whom the great Hellenic cities in this portion of Italy employed in the cultivation of their lands, were called Pelasgi, seemingly even in the historical times: it is upon this name, probably, that the mythical genealogy of Pherekydês is constructed. This Œnotrian or Pelasgian race were the population whom the Greek colonists found there on their arrival. They were known apparently under other names, such as the Sikels,—mentioned even in the Odyssey, though their exact locality in that poem cannot be ascertained—the Italians, or Itali, properly so called,—the Morgêtes,—and the Chaones,— all of them names of tribes either cognate or subdivisional.[653] The Chaones or Chaonians are also found, not only in Italy, but in Epirus, as one of the most considerable of the Epirotic tribes,—while Pandosia, the ancient residence of the Œnotrian kings in the southern corner of Italy,[654] was also the name of a township or locality in Epirus, with a neighboring river Acheron in both: from hence, and from some other similarities of name, it has been imagined that Epirots, Œnotrians, Sikels, etc., were all names of cognate people, and all entitled to be comprehended under the generic appellation of Pelasgi. That they belonged to the same ethnical kindred, there seems fair reason to presume, and also that in point of language, manners, and character, they were not very widely separated from the ruder branches of the Hellenic race.

It would appear too, as far as any judgment can be formed on a point essentially obscure, that the Œnotrians were ethnically akin to the primitive population of Rome and Latium on one side,[655] as they were to the Epirots on the other; and that tribes of this race, comprising Sikels, and Itali properly so called, as sections, had at one time occupied most of the territory from the left bank of the river Tiber southward between the Apennines and the Mediterranean. Both Herodotus and his junior contemporary, the Syracusan Antiochus, extend Œnotria as far northward as the river Silarus,[656] and Sophoklês includes the whole coast of the Mediterranean, from the strait of Messina to the gulf of Genoa, under the three successive names of Œnotria, the Tyrrhenian gulf, and Liguria.[657] Before or during the fifth century B. C., however, a different population, called Opicians, Oscans, or Ausonians, had descended from their original seats on or north of the Apennines,[658] and had conquered the territory between Latium and the Silarus, expelling or subjugating the Œnotrian inhabitants, and planting outlying settlements even down to the strait of Messina and the Liparæan isles. Hence the more precise Thucydidês designates the Campanian territory, in which Cumæ stood, as the country of the Opici; a denomination which Aristotle extends to the river Tiber, so as to comprehend within it Rome and Latium.[659] Not merely Campania, but in earlier times even Latium, originally occupied by a Sikel or Œnotrian population, appears to have been partially overrun and subdued by fiercer tribes from the Apennines, and had thus received a certain intermixture of Oscan race. But in the regions south of Latium, these Oscan conquests were still more overwhelming; and to this cause (in the belief of inquiring Greeks of the fifth century B. C.)[660] were owing the first migrations of the Œnotrian race out of southern Italy, which wrested the larger portion of Sicily from the preëxisting Sikanians.

This imperfect account, representing the ideas of Greeks of the fifth century B. C. as to the early population of southern Italy, is borne out by the fullest comparison which can be made between the Greek, Latin, and Oscan language,—the first two certainly, and the third probably, sisters of the same Indo-European family of languages. While the analogy, structural and radical, between Greek and Latin, establishes completely such community of family—and while comparative philology proves that on many points the Latin departs less from the supposed common type and mother-language than the Greek—there exists also in the former a non-Grecian element, and non-Grecian classes of words, which appear to imply a confluence of two or more different people with distinct tongues; and the same non-Grecian element, thus traceable in the Latin, seems to present itself still more largely developed in the scanty remains of the Oscan.[661] Moreover, the Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily caught several peculiar words from their association with the Sikels, which words approach in most cases very nearly to the Latin,—so that a resemblance thus appears between the language of Latium on the one side, and that of Œnotrians and Sikels (in southern Italy and Sicily) on the other, prior to the establishments of the Greeks. These are the two extremities of the Sikel population; between them appear, in the intermediate country, the Oscan or Ausonian tribes and language; and these latter seem to have been in a great measure conquerors and intruders from the central mountains. Such analogies of language countenance the supposition of Thucydidês and Antiochus, that these Sikels had once been spread over a still larger portion of southern Italy, and had migrated from thence into Sicily in consequence of Oscan invasions. The element of affinity existing between Latins, Œnotrians, and Sikels—to a certain degree also between all of them together and the Greeks, but not extending to the Opicians or Oscans, or to the Iapygians—may be called Pelasgic, for want of a better name; but, by whatever name it be called, the recognition of its existence connects and explains many isolated circumstances in the early history of Rome as well as in that of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks.

The earliest Grecian colony in Italy or Sicily, of which we know the precise date, is placed about 735 B. C., eighteen years subsequent to the Varronian era of Rome; so that the causes, tending to subject and Hellenize the Sikel population in the southern region, begin their operation nearly at the same time as those which tended gradually to exalt and aggrandize the modified variety of it which existed in Latium. At that time, according to the information given to Thucydidês, the Sikels had been established for three centuries in Sicily: Hellanikus and Philistus—who both recognized a similar migration into that island out of Italy, though they give different names, both to the emigrants and to those who expelled them—assign to the migration a date three generations before the Trojan war.[662] Earlier than 735 B. C., however, though we do not know the precise era of its commencement, there existed one solitary Grecian establishment in the Tyrrhenian sea,—the Campanian Cumæ, near cape Misenum; which the more common opinion of chronologists supposed to have been founded in 1050 B. C., and which has even been carried back by some authors to 1139 B. C.[663] Without reposing any faith in this early chronology, we may at least feel certain that it is the most ancient Grecian establishment in any part of Italy, and that a considerable time elapsed before any other Greek colonists were bold enough to cut themselves off from the Hellenic world by occupying seats on the other side of the strait of Messina,[664] with all the hazards of Tyrrhenian piracy as well as of Scylla and Charybdis. The Campanian Cumæ—known almost entirely by this its Latin designation—received its name and a portion of its inhabitants from the Æolic Kymê in Asia Minor. A joint band of settlers, partly from this latter town, partly from Chalkis in Eubœa,—the former under the Kymæan Hippoklês, the latter under the Chalkidian Megasthenês,—having combined to form the new town, it was settled by agreement that Kymê should bestow the name, and that Chalkis should enjoy the title and honors of the mother-city.[665]

Cumæ, situated on the neck of the peninsula which terminates in cape Misenum, occupied a lofty and rocky hill overhanging the sea,[666] and difficult of access on the land side. The unexampled fertility of the Phlegræan plains in the immediate vicinity of the city, the copious supply of fish in the Lucrine lake,[667] and the gold mines in the neighboring island of Pithekusæ,—both subsisted and enriched the colonists. They were joined by fresh settlers from Chalkis, from Eretria, and even from Samos; and became numerous enough to form distinct towns at Dikæarchia and Neapolis, thus spreading over a large portion of the bay of Naples. In the hollow rock under the very walls of the town was situated the cavern of the prophetic Sibyl,—a parallel and reproduction of the Gergithian Sibyl, near Kymê in Æolis: in the immediate neighborhood, too, stood the wild woods and dark lake of Avernus, consecrated to the subterranean gods, and offering an establishment of priests, with ceremonies evoking the dead, for purposes of prophecy or for solving doubts and mysteries. It was here that Grecian imagination localized the Cimmerians and the fable of Odysseus; and the Cumæans derived gains from the numerous visitors to this holy spot,[668] perhaps hardly less than those of the inhabitants of Krissa from the vicinity of Delphi. Of the relations of these Cumæans with the Hellenic world generally, we unfortunately know nothing; but they seem to have been in intimate connection with Rome during the time of the kings, and especially during that of the last king Tarquin,[669]—forming the intermediate link between the Greek and Latin world, whereby the feelings of the Teukrians and Gergithians near the Æolic Kymê, and the legendary stories of Trojan as well as Grecian heroes—Æneas and Odysseus—passed into the antiquarian imagination of Rome and Latium.[670] The writers of the Augustan age knew Cumæ only in its decline, and wondered at the vast extent of its ancient walls, yet remaining in their time. But during the two centuries prior to 500 B. C., these walls inclosed a full and thriving population, in the plenitude of prosperity,—with a surrounding territory extensive as well as fertile,[671] resorted to by purchasers of corn from Rome in years of scarcity, and unassailed as yet by formidable neighbors,—and with a coast and harbors well suited to maritime commerce. At that period, the town of Capua, if indeed it existed at all, was of very inferior importance, and the chief part of the rich plain around it was included in the possessions of Cumæ[672]—not unworthy probably, in the sixth century B. C., to be numbered with Sybaris and Krotôn.

The decline of Cumæ begins in the first half of the fifth century B. C. (500-450 B. C.), first, from the growth of hostile powers in the interior,—the Tuscans and Samnites,—next, from violent intestine dissensions and a destructive despotism. The town was assailed by a formidable host of invaders from the interior, Tuscans reinforced by Umbrian and Daunian allies; which Dionysius refers to the 64th Olympiad (524-520 B. C.), though upon what chronological authority we do not know, and though this same time is marked by Eusebius as the date of the foundation of Dikæarchia from Cumæ. The invaders, in spite of great disparity of number, were bravely repelled by the Cumæans, chiefly through the heroic example of a citizen then first known and distinguished,—Aristodêmus Malakus. The government of the city was oligarchical, and the oligarchy from that day became jealous of Aristodêmus; who, on his part, acquired extraordinary popularity and influence among the people. Twenty years afterwards, the Latin city of Aricia, an ancient ally of Cumæ was attacked by a Tuscan host, and intreated succor from the Cumæans. The oligarchy of the latter thought this a good opportunity to rid themselves of Aristodêmus, whom they despatched by sea to Aricia, with rotten vessels and an insufficient body of troops. But their stratagem failed and proved their ruin; for the skill and intrepidity of Aristodêmus sufficed for the rescue of Aricia, and he brought back his troops victorious and devoted to himself personally. Partly by force, partly by stratagem, he subverted the oligarchy, put to death the principal rulers, and constituted himself despot: by a jealous energy, by disarming the people, and by a body of mercenaries, he maintained himself in this authority for twenty years, running his career of lust and iniquity until old age. At length a conspiracy of the oppressed population proved successful against him; he was slain, with all his family and many of his chief partisans, and the former government was restored.[673]

The despotism of Aristodêmus falls during the exile of the expelled Tarquin[674] (to whom he gave shelter) from Rome, and during the government of Gelôn at Syracuse; and this calamitous period of dissension and misrule was one of the great causes of the decline of Cumæ. Nearly at the same time, the Tuscan power, both by land and sea, appears at its maximum, and the Tuscan establishment at Capua begins, if we adopt the era of the town as given by Cato.[675] There was thus created at the expense of Cumæ a powerful city, which was still farther aggrandized afterwards when conquered and occupied by the Samnites; whose invading tribes, under their own name or that of Lucanians, extended themselves during the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., even to the shores of the gulf of Tarentum.[676] Cumæ was also exposed to formidable dangers from the sea-side: a fleet, either of Tuscans alone, or of Tuscans and Carthaginians united, assailed it in 474 B. C., and it was only rescued by the active interposition of Hiero, despot of Syracuse; by whose naval force the invaders were repelled with slaughter.[677] These incidents go partly to indicate, partly to explain, the decline of the most ancient Hellenic settlement in Italy,—a decline from which it never recovered.

After briefly sketching the history of Cumæ, we pass naturally to that series of powerful colonies which were established in Sicily and Italy, beginning with 735 B. C.—enterprises in which Chalkis, Corinth, Megara, Sparta, the Achæans in Peloponnesus, and the Lokrians out of Peloponnesus, were all concerned. Chalkis, the metropolis of Cumæ, became also the metropolis of Naxos, the most ancient Grecian colony in Sicily, on the eastern coast of the island, between the strait of Messina and Mount Ætna.

The great number of Grecian settlements, from different colonizing towns, which appear to have taken effect within a few years upon the eastern coast of Italy and Sicily—from the Iapygian cape to cape Pachynus—leads us to suppose that the extraordinary capacities of the country for receiving new settlers had become known only suddenly. The colonies follow so close upon each other, that the example of the first cannot have been the single determining motive to those which followed. I shall have occasion to point out, even a century later (on the occasion of the settlement of Kyrênê), the narrow range of Grecian navigation; so that the previous supposed ignorance would not be at all incredible, were it not for the fact of the preëxisting colony of Cumæ. According to the practice universal with Grecian ships—which rarely permitted themselves to lose sight of the coast except in cases of absolute necessity—every man, who navigated from Greece to Italy or Sicily, first coasted along the shores of Akarnania and Epirus until he reached the latitude of Korkyra; he then struck across first to that island, next to the Iapygian promontory, from whence he proceeded along the eastern coast of Italy (the gulfs of Tarentum and Squillace) to the southern promontory of Calabria and the Sicilian strait; he would then sail, still coastwise, either to Syracuse or to Cumæ, according to his destination. So different are nautical habits now, that this fact requires special notice; we must recollect, moreover, that in 735 B. C., there were yet no Grecian settlements either in Epirus or in Korkyra: outside of the gulf of Corinth, the world was non-Hellenic, with the single exception of the remote Cumæ. A little before the last-mentioned period, Theoklês (an Athenian or a Chalkidian—probably the latter) was cast by storms on the coast of Sicily, and became acquainted with the tempting character of the soil, as well as the dispersed and half-organized condition of the petty Sikel communities who occupied it.[678] The oligarchy of Chalkis, acting upon the information which he brought back, sent out under his guidance settlers,[679] Chalkidian and Naxian, who founded the Sicilian Naxos. Theoklês and his companions on landing first occupied the eminence of Taurus, immediately overhanging the sea (whereon was established four centuries afterwards the town of Tauromenium, after Naxos had been destroyed by the Syracusan despot Dionysius); for they had to make good their position against the Sikels, who were in occupation of the neighborhood, and whom it was requisite either to dispossess or to subjugate. After they had acquired secure possession of the territory, the site of the city was transferred to a convenient spot adjoining; but the hill first occupied remained ever memorable, both to Greeks and to Sikels. On it was erected the altar of Apollo Archêgetês, the divine patron who (through his oracle at Delphi) had sanctioned and determined Hellenic colonization in the island. The altar remained permanently as a sanctuary common to all the Sicilian Greeks, and the Theôrs or sacred envoys from their various cities, when they visited the Olympic and other festivals of Greece, were always in the habit of offering sacrifice upon it immediately before their departure. To the autonomous Sikels, on the other hand, the hill was an object of durable but odious recollection, as the spot in which Grecian conquest and intrusion had first begun; and at the distance of three centuries and a half from the event, we find them still animated by this sentiment in obstructing the foundation of Tauromenium.[680]

At the time when Theoklês landed, the Sikels were in possession of the larger half of the island, lying chiefly to the east of the Heræan mountains,[681]—a chain of hills stretching in a southerly direction from that principal chain, called the Neurode or Nebrode mountains, which runs from east to west for the most part parallel with the northern shore. West of the Heræan hills were situated the Sikans; and west of these latter, Eryx and Egesta, the possessions of the Elymi: along the western portion of the northern coast, also, were placed Motyê, Soloêis, and Panormus (now Palermo), the Phenician or Carthaginian seaports. The formation, or at least the extension, of these three last-mentioned ports, however, was a consequence of the multiplied Grecian colonies; for the Phenicians down to this time had not founded any territorial or permanent establishments, but had contented themselves with occupying in a temporary way various capes or circumjacent islets, for the purpose of trade with the interior. The arrival of formidable Greek settlers, maritime like themselves, induced them to abandon these outlying factories, and to concentrate their strength in the three considerable towns above named, all near to that corner of the island which approached most closely to Carthage. The east side of Sicily, and most part of the south, were left open to the Greeks, with no other opposition than that of the indigenous Sikels and Sikans, who were gradually expelled from all contact with the sea-shore, except on part of the north side of the island,—and who were indeed, so unpractised at sea as well as destitute of shipping, that in the tale of their old migration out of Italy into Sicily, the Sikels were affirmed to have crossed the narrow strait upon rafts at a moment of favorable wind.[682]

In the very next year[683] to the foundation of Naxos, Corinth began her part in the colonization of the island. A body of settlers, under the œkist Archias, landed in the islet Ortygia, farther southward on the eastern coast, expelled the Sikel occupants, and laid the first stone of the mighty Syracuse. Ortygia, two English miles in circumference, was separated from the main island only by a narrow channel, which was bridged over when the city was occupied and enlarged by Gelôn in the 72d Olympiad, if not earlier. It formed only a small part, though the most secure and best-fortified part, of the vast space which the city afterwards occupied; but it sufficed alone for the inhabitants during a considerable time, and the present city in its modern decline has again reverted to the same modest limits. Moreover, Ortygia offered another advantage of not less value; it lay across the entrance of a spacious harbor, approached by a narrow mouth, and its fountain of Arethusa was memorable in antiquity both for the abundance and goodness of its water. We should have been glad to learn something respecting the numbers, character, position, nativity, etc. of these primitive emigrants, the founders of a city which we shall hereafter find comprising a vast walled circuit, which Strabo reckons at one hundred and eighty stadia, but which the modern observations of Colonel Leake announce as fourteen English miles,[684] or about one hundred and twenty-two stadia. We are told only that many of them came from the Corinthian village of Tenea, and that one of them sold to a comrade on the voyage his lot of land in prospective, for the price of a honey-cake: the little which we hear about the determining motives[685] of the colony refers to the personal character of the œkist. Archias son of Euagêtus, one of the governing gens of the Bacchiadæ at Corinth, in the violent prosecution of unbridled lust, had caused, though unintentionally, the death of a free youth named Aktæon, whose father Melissus, after having vainly endeavored to procure redress, slew himself at the Isthmian games, invoking the vengeance of Poseidôn against the aggressor.[686] Such were the destructive effects of this paternal curse, that Archias was compelled to expatriate, and the Bacchiadæ placed him at the head of the emigrants to Ortygia, in 734 B. C.: at that time, probably, this was a sentence of banishment to which no man of commanding station would submit except under the pressure of necessity.

There yet remained room for new settlements between Naxos and Syracuse: and Theoklês, the œkist of Naxos, found himself in a situation to occupy part of this space only five years after the foundation of Syracuse: perhaps he may have been joined by fresh settlers. He attacked and expelled the Sikels[687] from the fertile spot called Leontini, seemingly about half-way down on the eastern coast between Mount Ætna and Syracuse; and also from Katana, immediately adjoining to Mount Ætna, which still retains both its name and its importance. Two new Chalkidic colonies were thus founded,—Theoklês himself becoming œkist of Leontini, and Euarchus chosen by the Katanæan settlers themselves, of Katana.

The city of Megara was not behind Corinth and Chalkis in furnishing emigrants to Sicily. Lamis the Megarian, having now arrived with a body of colonists, took possession first of a new spot called Trotilus, but afterwards joined the recent Chalkidian settlement at Leontini. The two bodies of settlers, however, could not live in harmony, and Lamis, with his companions, was soon expelled; he then occupied Thapsus,[688] at a little distance to the northward of Ortygia or Syracuse, and shortly afterwards died. His followers made an alliance with Hyblôn, king of a neighboring tribe of Sikels, who invited them to settle in his territory; they accepted the proposition, relinquished Thapsus, and founded, in conjunction with Hyblôn, the city called the Hyblæan Megara, between Leontini and Syracuse. This incident is the more worthy of notice, because it is one of the instances which we find of a Grecian colony beginning by amicable fusion with the preëxisting residents: Thucydidês seems to conceive the prince Hyblôn as betraying his people against their wishes to the Greeks.[689]

It was thus that, during the space of five years, several distinct bodies of Greek emigrants had rapidly succeeded each other in Sicily: for the next forty years, we do not hear of any fresh arrivals, which is the more easy to understand as there were during that interval several considerable foundations on the coast of Italy, which probably took off the disposable Greek settlers. At length, forty-five years after the foundation of Syracuse, a fresh body of settlers arrived, partly from Rhodes under Antiphêmus, partly from Krête under Entimus, and founded the city of Gela on the south-western front of the island, between cape Pachynus and Lilybæum (B. C. 690)—still on the territory of the Sikels, though extending ultimately to a portion of that of the Sikans.[690] The name of the city was given from that of the neighboring river Gela.

One other fresh migration from Greece to Sicily remains to be mentioned, though we cannot assign the exact date of it. The town of Zanklê (now Messina), on the strait between Italy and Sicily, was at first occupied by certain privateers or pirates from Cumæ,—the situation being eminently convenient for their operations. But the success of the other Chalkidic settlements imparted to this nest of pirates a more enlarged and honorable character: a body of new settlers joined them from Chalkis and other towns of Eubœa, the land was regularly divided, and two joint œkists were provided to qualify the town as a member of the Hellenic communion—Periêrês from Chalkis, and Kratæmenês from Cumæ. The name Zanklê had been given by the primitive Sikel occupants of the place, meaning in their language a sickle; but it was afterwards changed to Messênê by Anaxilas, despot of Rhegium, who, when he conquered the town, introduced new inhabitants, in a manner hereafter to be noticed.[691]

Besides these emigrations direct from Greece, the Hellenic colonies in Sicily became themselves the founders of sub-colonies. Thus the Syracusans, seventy years after their own settlement (B. C. 664), founded Akræ—Kasmenæ, twenty years afterwards (B. C. 644), and Kamarina forty-five years after Kasmenæ (B. C. 599): Daskôn and Menekôlus were the œkists of the latter, which became in process of time an independent and considerable town, while Akræ and Kasmenæ seem to have remained subject to Syracuse. Kamarina was on the south-western side of the island, forming the boundary of the Syracusan territory towards Gela. Kallipolis was established from Naxos, and Eubœa (a town so called) from Leontini.[692]

Hitherto, the Greeks had colonized altogether on the territory of the Sikels; the three towns which remain to be mentioned were all founded in that of the Sikans,[693]—Agrigentum or Akragas, Selinûs, and Himera. The two former were both on the south-western coast,—Agrigentum bordering upon Gela on the one side, and upon Selinûs on the other. Himera was situated on the westerly portion of the northern coast,—the single Hellenic establishment in the time of Thucydidês which that long line of coast presented. The inhabitants of the Hyblæan Megara were founders of Selinûs, about 630 B. C., a century after their own establishment: the œkist Pamillus, according to the usual Hellenic practice, was invited from their metropolis Megara in Greece proper, but we are not told how many fresh settlers came with him: the language of Thucydidês leads us to suppose that the new town was peopled chiefly from the Hyblæan Megarians themselves. The town of Akragas, or Agrigentum, called after the neighboring river of the former name, was founded from Gela in B. C. 582. Its œkists were Aristonous and Pystilus, and it received the statutes and religious characteristics of Gela. Himera, on the other hand, was founded from Zanklê, under three œkists, Eukleidês, Simus, and Sakôn. The chief part of its inhabitants were of Chalkidic race, and its legal and religious characteristics were Chalkidic; but a portion of the settlers were Syracusan exiles, called Mylêtidæ, who had been expelled from home by a sedition, so that the Himeræan dialect was a mixture of Doric and Chalkidic. Himera was situated not far from the towns of the Elymi,—Eyrx and Egesta.

Such were the chief establishments founded by the Greeks in Sicily during the two centuries after their first settlement in 735 B. C. The few particulars just stated respecting them are worthy of all confidence,—for they come to us from Thucydidês,—but they are unfortunately too few to afford the least satisfaction to our curiosity. It cannot be doubted that these first two centuries were periods of steady increase and prosperity among the Sicilian Greeks, undisturbed by those distractions and calamities which supervened afterwards, and which led indeed to the extraordinary aggrandizement of some of their communities, but also to the ruin of several others: moreover, it seems that the Carthaginians in Sicily gave them no trouble until the time of Gelôn. Their position will indeed seem singularly advantageous, if we consider the extraordinary fertility of the soil in this fine island, especially near the sea,—its capacity for corn, wine, and oil, the species of cultivation to which the Greek husbandman had been accustomed under less favorable circumstances,—its abundant fisheries on the coast, so important in Grecian diet, and continuing undiminished even at the present day, together with sheep, cattle, hides, wool, and timber from the native population in the interior. These natives seem to have been of rude pastoral habits, dispersed either among petty hill-villages, or in caverns hewn out of the rock, like the primitive inhabitants of the Balearic islands and Sardinia; so that Sicily, like New Zealand in our century, was now for the first time approached by organized industry and tillage.[694] Their progress, though very great, during this most prosperous interval (between the foundation of Naxos, in 735 B. C. to the reign of Gelôn at Syracuse in 485 B. C.), is not to be compared to that of the English colonies in America; but it was nevertheless very great, and appears greater from being concentrated as it was in and around a few cities. Individual spreading and separation of residence were rare, nor did they consist either with the security or the social feelings of a Grecian colonist. The city to which he belonged was the central point of his existence, where the produce which he raised was brought home to be stored or sold, and where alone his active life, political, domestic, religious, recreative, etc., was carried on. There were dispersed throughout the territory of the city small fortified places and garrisons,[695] serving as temporary protection to the cultivators in case of sudden inroad; but there was no permanent residence for the free citizen except the town itself. This was, perhaps, even more the case in a colonial settlement, where everything began and spread from one central point, than in Attica, where the separate villages had once nourished a population politically independent. It was in the town, therefore, that the aggregate increase of the colony palpably concentrated itself,—property as well as population,—private comfort and luxury not less than public force and grandeur. Such growth and improvement was of course sustained by the cultivation of the territory, but the evidences of it were manifested in the town; and the large population which we shall have occasion to notice as belonging to Agrigentum, Sybaris, and other cities, will illustrate this position.

There is another point of some importance to mention in regard to the Sicilian and Italian cities. The population of the town itself may have been principally, though not wholly, Greek; but the population of the territory belonging to the town, or of the dependent villages which covered it, must have been in a great measure Sikel or Sikan. The proof of this is found in a circumstance common to all the Sicilian and Italian Greeks,—the peculiarity of their weights, measures, monetary system, and language. The pound and ounce are divisions and denominations belonging altogether to Italy and Sicily, and unknown originally to the Greeks, whose scale consisted of the obolus, the drachma, the mina, and the talent: among the Greeks, too, the metal first and most commonly employed for money was silver, while in Italy and Sicily copper was the primitive metal made use of. Now among all the Italian and Sicilian Greeks, a scale of weight and money arose quite different from that of the Greeks at home, and formed by a combination and adjustment of the one of these systems to the other; it is in many points complex and difficult to understand, but in the final result the native system seems to be predominant, and the Grecian system subordinate.[696] Such a consequence as this could not have ensued, if the Greek settlers in Italy and Sicily had kept themselves apart as communities, and had merely carried on commerce and barter with communities of Sikels: it implies a fusion of the two races in the same community, though doubtless in the relation of superior and subject, and not in that of equals. The Greeks on arriving in the country expelled the natives from the town, perhaps also from the lands immediately round the town; but when they gradually extended their territory, this was probably accomplished, not by the expulsion, but by the subjugation of those Sikel tribes and villages, much subdivided and each individually petty, whom their aggressions successively touched.

At the time when Theoklês landed on the hill near Naxos, and Archias in the islet of Ortygia, and when each of them expelled the Sikels from that particular spot, there were Sikel villages or little communities spread through all the neighboring country. By the gradual encroachments of the colony, some of these might be dispossessed and driven out of the plains near the coast into the more mountainous regions of the interior, but many of them doubtless found it convenient to submit, to surrender a portion of their lands, and to hold the rest as subordinate villagers of an Hellenic city-community:[697] and we find even at the time of the Athenian invasion (414 B. C.) villages existing in distinct identity as Sikels, yet subject and tributary to Syracuse. Moreover, the influence which the Greeks exercised, though in the first instance essentially compulsory, became also in part self-operating,—the ascendency of a higher over a lower civilization. It was the working of concentrated townsmen, safe among one another by their walls and by mutual confidence, and surrounded by more or less of ornament, public as well as private,—upon dispersed, unprotected, artless villagers, who could not be insensible to the charm of that superior intellect, imagination, and organization, which wrought so powerfully upon the whole contemporaneous world. To understand the action of these superior emigrants upon the native but inferior Sikels, during those three earliest centuries (730-430 B. C.) which followed the arrival of Archias and Theoklês, we have only to study the continuance of the same action during the three succeeding centuries which preceded the age of Cicero. At the period when Athens undertook the siege of Syracuse (B. C. 415), the interior of the island was occupied by Sikel and Sikan communities, autonomous, and retaining their native customs and language;[698] but in the time of Verres and Cicero (three centuries and a half afterwards) the interior of the island, as well as the maritime regions had become Hellenized: the towns in the interior were then hardly less Greek than those on the coast. Cicero contrasts favorably the character of the Sicilians with that of the Greeks generally (i. e. the Greeks out of Sicily), but he nowhere distinguishes Greeks in Sicily from native Sikels;[699] nor Enna and Centuripi from Katana and Agrigentum. The little Sikel villages became gradually semi-Hellenized and merged into subjects of a Grecian town during the first three centuries, this change took place in the regions of the coast,—during the following three centuries, in the regions of the interior; and probably with greater rapidity and effect in the earlier period, not only because the action of the Grecian communities was then closer, more concentrated, and more compulsory, but because also the obstinate tribes could then retire into the interior.

The Greeks in Sicily are thus not to be considered as purely Greeks, but as modified by a mixture of Sikel and Sikan language, customs, and character. Each town included in its non-privileged population a number of semi-Hellenized Sikels (or Sikans, as the case might be), who, though in a state of dependence, contributed to mix the breed and influence the entire mass. We have no reason to suppose that the Sikel or Œnotrian language ever became written, like Latin, Oscan, or Umbrian:[700] the inscriptions of Segesta and Halesus are all in Doric Greek, which supplanted the native tongue for public purposes as a separate language, but not without becoming itself modified in the confluence. In following the ever-renewed succession of violent political changes, the inferior capacity of regulated and pacific popular government, and the more unrestrained and voluptuous license, which the Sicilian and Italian Greeks[701] exhibit as compared with Athens and the cities of Greece proper,—we must call to mind that we are not dealing with pure Hellenism; and that the native element, though not unfavorable to activity or increase of wealth, prevented the Grecian colonist from partaking fully in that improved organization which we so distinctly trace in Athens from Solon downwards. How much the taste, habits, ideas, religion, and local mythes, of the native Sikels passed into the minds of the Sikeliots or Sicilian Greeks, is shown by the character of their literature and poetry. Sicily was the native country of that rustic mirth and village buffoonery which gave birth to the primitive comedy,—politicized and altered at Athens so as to suit men of the market-place, the ekklesia, and the dikastery,—blending, in the comedies of the Syracusan Epicharmus, copious details about the indulgences of the table (for which the ancient Sicilians were renowned) with Pythagorean philosophy and moral maxims,—but given with all the naked simplicity of common life, in a sort of rhythmical prose, without even the restraint of a fixed metre, by the Syracusan Sophrôn in his lost Mimes, and afterwards polished as well as idealized in the Bucolic poetry of Theokritus.[702] That which is commonly termed the Doric comedy was in great part at least, the Sikel comedy taken up by Dorian composers,—the Doric race and dialect being decidedly predominant in Sicily: the manners thus dramatized belonged to that coarser vein of humor which the Doric Greeks of the town had in common with the semi-Hellenized Sikels of the circumjacent villages. Moreover, it seems probable that this rustic population enabled the despots of the Greco-Sicilian towns to form easily and cheaply those bodies of mercenary troops, by whom their power was sustained,[703] and whose presence rendered the continuance of popular government, even supposing it begun, all but impossible.

It was the destiny of most of the Grecian colonial establishments to perish by the growth and aggression of those inland powers upon whose coast they were planted,—powers which gradually acquired, from the vicinity of the Greeks, a military and political organization, and a power of concentrated action, such as they had not originally possessed. But in Sicily, the Sikels were not numerous enough even to maintain permanently their own nationality, and were ultimately penetrated on all sides by Hellenic ascendency and manners. We shall, nevertheless, come to one remarkable attempt, made by a native Sikel prince in the 82d Olympiad (455 B. C.),—the enterprising Duketius,—to group many petty Sikel villages into one considerable town, and thus to raise his countrymen into the Grecian stage of polity and organization. Had there been any Sikel prince endowed with these superior ideas at the time when the Greeks first settled in Sicily, the subsequent history of the island would probably have been very different; but Duketius had derived his projects from the spectacle of the Grecian towns around him, and these latter had acquired much too great power to permit him to succeed. The description of his abortive attempt, however, which we find in Diodorus,[704] meagre as it is, forms an interesting point in the history of the island.

Grecian colonization in Italy began nearly at the same time as in Sicily, and was marked by the same general circumstances. Placing ourselves at Rhegium (now Reggio) on the Sicilian strait, we trace Greek cities gradually planted on various points of the coast as far as Cumæ on the one sea, and Tarentum (Taranto) on the other. Between the two seas runs the lofty chain of the Apennines, calcareous in the upper part of its course, throughout middle Italy,—granitic and schistose in the lower part, where it traverses the territories now called the hither and the farther Calabria. The plains and valleys on each side of the Calabrian Apennines exhibit a luxuriance of vegetation extolled by all observers, and surpassing even that of Sicily;[705] and great as the productive powers of this territory are now, there is full reason for believing that they must have been far greater in ancient times. For it has been visited by repeated earthquakes, each of which has left calamitous marks of devastation: those of 1638 and 1783—especially the latter, whose destructive effects were on a terrific scale, both as to life and property[706]—are of a date sufficiently recent to admit of recording and measuring the damage done by each; and that damage, in many parts of the south-western coast, was great and irreparable. Animated as the epithets are, therefore, with which the modern traveller paints the present fertility of Calabria, we are warranted in enlarging their meaning when we conceive the country as it stood between 720-320 B. C., the period of Grecian occupation and independence; while the unhealthy air, which now desolates the plains generally, seems then to have been felt only to a limited extent, and over particular localities. The founders of Tarentum, Sybaris, Krotôn, Lokri, and Rhegium, planted themselves in situations of unexampled promise to the industrious cultivator, which the previous inhabitants had turned to little account: since the subjugation of the Grecian cities, these once rich possessions have sunk into poverty and depopulation, especially during the last three centuries, from insalubrity, indolence, bad administration, and fear of the Barbary corsairs.

The Œnotrians, Sikels, or Italians, who were in possession of these territories in 720 B. C., seem to have been rude petty communities,—procuring for themselves safety by residence on lofty eminences,—more pastoral than agricultural, and some of them consuming the produce of their fields in common mess, on a principle analogous to the syssitia of Sparta or Krête. King Italus was said to have introduced this peculiarity[707] among the southernmost portion of the Œnotrian population, and at the same time to have bestowed upon them the name of Italians, though they were also known by the name of Sikels. Throughout the centre of Calabria between sea and sea, the high chain of the Apennines afforded protection to a certain extent both to their independence and to their pastoral habits. But these heights are made to be enjoyed in conjunction with the plains beneath, so as to alternate winter and summer pasture for the cattle: it is in this manner that the richness of the country is rendered available, since a large portion of the mountain range is buried in snow during the winter months. Such remarkable diversity of soil and climate rendered Calabria a land of promise for Grecian settlement: the plains and lower eminences being as productive of corn, wine, oil, and flax, as the mountains in summer-pasture and timber,—and abundance of rain falling upon the higher ground, which requires only industry and care to be made to impart the maximum of fertility to the lower: moreover, a long line of sea-coast,—though not well furnished with harbors,—and an abundant supply of fish, came in aid of the advantages of the soil. While the poorer freemen of the Grecian cities were enabled to obtain small lots of fertile land in the neighborhood, to be cultivated by their own hands, and to provide for the most part their own food and clothing, the richer proprietors made profitable use of the more distant portions of the territory by means of their cattle, sheep, and slaves.

Of the Grecian towns on this favored coast, the earliest as well as the most prosperous were Sybaris and Krotôn: both in the gulf of Tarentum,—both of Achæan origin, and conterminous with each other in respect of territory. Krotôn was placed not far to the west of the south-eastern extremity of the gulf, called in ancient times the Lakinian cape, and ennobled by the temple of the Lakinian Hêrê, which became alike venerated and adorned by the Greek resident as well as by the passing navigator: one solitary column of the temple, the humble remnant of its past magnificence, yet marks the extremity of this once celebrated promontory. Sybaris seems to have been planted in the year 720 B. C., Krotôn in 710 B. C.: Iselikeus was œkist of the former,[708] Myskellus of the latter. This large Achæan emigration seems to have been connected with the previous expulsion of the Achæan population from the more southerly region of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, though in what precise manner we are not enabled to see: the Achæan towns in Peloponnesus appear in later times too inconsiderable to furnish emigrants, but probably in the eighth century B. C. their population may have been larger. The town of Sybaris was planted between two rivers, the Sybaris and the Krathis,[709] the name of the latter borrowed from a river of Achaia,—the town of Krotôn about twenty-five miles distant, on the river Æsarus. The primitive settlers of Sybaris consisted in part of Trœzenians, who were, however, subsequently expelled by the more numerous Achæans,—a deed of violence which was construed by the religious sentiment of Antiochus and some other Grecian historians, as having drawn down upon them the anger of the gods in the ultimate destruction of the city by the Krotoniates.[710]

The fatal contest between these two cities, which ended in the ruin of Sybaris, took place in 510 B. C., after the latter had subsisted in her prosperity for two hundred and ten years. And the astonishing prosperity to which both of them attained is a sufficient proof that during the most of this period they had remained in peace at least, if not in alliance and common Achæan brotherhood. Unfortunately, the general fact of their great size, wealth, and power, is all that we are permitted to know. The walls of Sybaris embraced a circuit of fifty stadia, or more than six miles, while those of Krotôn were even larger, and comprised not less than twelve miles:[711] a large walled circuit was advantageous for sheltering the movable property in the territory around, which was carried in on the arrival of an invading enemy. Both cities possessed an extensive dominion across the Calabrian peninsula from sea to sea; but the territorial range of Sybaris seems to have been greater and her colonies wider and more distant,—a fact which may, perhaps, explain the smaller circuit of the city.

The Sybarites were founders of Laus and Skidrus, on the Mediterranean sea in the gulf of Policastro, and even of the more distant Poseidonia,—now known by its Latin name of Pæstum, as well as by the temples which still remain to decorate its deserted site. They possessed twenty-five dependent towns, and ruled over four distinct native tribes or nations. What these nations were we are not told,[712] but they were probably different sections of the Œnotrian name. The Krotoniates also reached across to the Mediterranean sea, and founded (upon the gulf now called St. Euphemia) the town of Terina, and seemingly also that of Lametini.[713] The inhabitants of the Epizephyrian Lokri, which was situated in a more southern part of Calabria Ultra, near the modern town of Gerace, extended themselves in like manner across the peninsula, and founded upon the Mediterranean coast the towns of Hippônium, Medma, and Mataurum,[714] as well as Melæ and Itoneia, in localities not now exactly ascertained.

Myskellus of Rhypes in Achaia, the founder of Krotôn under the express indication of the Delphian oracle, is said to have thought the site of Sybaris preferable, and to have solicited permission from the oracle to plant his colony there, but he was admonished to obey strictly the directions first given.[715] It is farther affirmed that the foundation of Krotôn was aided by Archias, then passing along the coast with his settlers for Syracuse, who is also brought into conjunction in a similar manner with the foundation of Lokri: but neither of these statements appears chronologically admissible. The Italian Lokri (called Epizephyrian, from the neighborhood of cape Zephyrium) was founded in the year 683 B. C. by settlers from the Lokrians,—either the Ozolian Lokrians in the Krissæan gulf, or those of Opus on the Eubœan strait. This point was disputed even in antiquity, and perhaps both the one and the other may have contributed: Euanthus was the œkist of the place.[716] The first years of the Epizephyrian Lokri are said to have been years of sedition and discord. And the vile character which we hear ascribed to the primitive colonists, as well as their perfidious dealing with the natives, are the more to be noted, as the Lokrians, of the times both of Aristotle and of Polybius, fully believed these statements in regard to their own ancestors.

The original emigrants to Lokri were, according to Aristotle, a body of runaway slaves, men-stealers, and adulterers, whose only legitimate connection with an honorable Hellenic root arose from a certain number of well-born Lokrian women who accompanied them. These women belonged to those select families called the Hundred Houses, who constituted what may be called the nobility of the Lokrians in Greece proper, and their descendants continued to enjoy a certain rank and preëminence in the colony, even in the time of Polybius. The emigration is said to have been occasioned by disorderly intercourse between these noble Lokrian women and their slaves,—perhaps by intermarriage with persons of inferior station, where there had existed no recognized connubium;[717] a fact referred, by the informants of Aristotle, to the long duration of the first Messenian war,—the Lokrian warriors having for the most part continued in the Messenian territory as auxiliaries of the Spartans during the twenty years of that war,[718] permitting themselves only rare and short visits to their homes. This is a story resembling that which we shall find in explanation of the colony of Tarentum. It comes to us too imperfectly to admit of criticism or verification; but the unamiable character of the first emigrants is a statement deserving credit, and very unlikely to have been invented. Their first proceedings on settling in Italy display a perfidy in accordance with the character ascribed to them. They found the territory in this southern portion of the Calabrian peninsula possessed by native Sikels, who, alarmed at their force, and afraid to try the hazard of resistance, agreed to admit them to a participation and joint residence. The covenant was concluded and sworn to by both parties in the following terms: “There shall be friendship between us, and we will enjoy the land in common, so long as we stand upon this earth and have heads upon our shoulders.” At the time when the oath was taken, the Lokrians had put earth into their shoes and concealed heads of garlic upon their shoulders; so that, when they had divested themselves of these appendages, the oath was considered as no longer binding. Availing themselves of the first convenient opportunity, they attacked the Sikels by surprise and drove them out of the territory, of which they thus acquired the exclusive possession.[719] Their first establishment was formed upon the headland itself, cape Zephyrium (now Bruzzano); but after three or four years the site of the town was moved to an eminence in the neighboring plain, in which the Syracusans are said to have aided them.[720]

In describing the Grecian settlers in Sicily, I have already stated that they are to be considered as Greeks with a considerable infusion of blood, of habits, and of manners, from the native Sikels: the case is the same with the Italiots, or Italian Greeks, and in respect to these Epizephyrian Lokrians, especially, we find it expressly noticed by Polybius. Composed as their band was of ignoble and worthless men, not bound together by strong tribe-feelings or traditional customs, they were the more ready to adopt new practices, as well religious as civil,[721] from the Sikels. One in particular is noticed by the historian,—the religious dignity called the Phialêphorus, or censer-bearer, enjoyed among the native Sikels by a youth of noble birth, who performed the duties belonging to it in their sacrifices; but the Lokrians, while they identified themselves with the religious ceremony, and adopted both the name and the dignity, altered the sex, and conferred it upon one of those women of noble blood who constituted the ornament of their settlement. Even down to the days of Polybius, some maiden descended from one of these select Hundred Houses, still continued to bear the title and to perform the ceremonial duties of Phialêphorus. We learn from these statements how large a portion of Sikels must have become incorporated as dependents in the colony of the Epizephyrian Lokri, and how strongly marked was the intermixture of their habits with those of the Greek settlers; while the tracing back among them of all eminence of descent to a few emigrant women of noble birth, is a peculiarity belonging exclusively to their city.

That a body of colonists, formed of such unpromising materials, should have fallen into much lawlessness and disorder, is noway surprising; but these mischiefs appear to have become so utterly intolerable in the early years of the colony, as to force upon every one the necessity of some remedy. Hence arose a phenomenon new in the march of Grecian society,—the first promulgation of written laws. The Epizephyrian Lokrians, having applied to the Delphian oracle for some healing suggestion under their distress, were directed to make laws for themselves;[722] and received the ordinances of a shepherd named Zaleukus, which he professed to have learned from the goddess Athênê in a dream. His laws are said to have been put in writing and promulgated in 664 B. C., forty years earlier than those of Drako at Athens.

That these first of all Grecian written laws were few and simple, we may be sufficiently assured. The only fact certain respecting them is their extraordinary rigor:[723] they seem to have enjoined the application of the lex talionis as a punishment for personal injuries. In this general character of his laws, Zaleukus was the counterpart of Drako. But so little was certainly known, and so much falsely asserted, respecting him, that Timæus the historian went so far as to call in question his real existence,[724]—against the authority not only of Ephorus, but also of Aristotle and Theophrastus. The laws must have remained, however, for a long time, formally unchanged; for so great was the aversion of the Lokrians, we are told, to any new law, that the man who ventured to propose one appeared in public with a rope round his neck, which was at once tightened if he failed to convince the assembly of the necessity of his proposition.[725] Of the government of the Epizephyrian Lokri we know only, that in later times it included a great council of one thousand members, and a chief executive magistrate called Kosmopolis: it is spoken of also as strictly and carefully administered.

The date of Rhegium (Reggio), separated from the territory of the Epizephyrian Lokri by the river Halex, must have been not only earlier than Lokri, but even earlier than Sybaris,—if the statement of Antiochus be correct, that the colonists were joined by those Messenians, who, prior to the first Messenian war, were anxious to make reparation to the Spartans for the outrage offered to the Spartan maidens at the temple of Artemis Limnatis, but were overborne by their countrymen and forced into exile. A different version, however, is given by Pausanias of this migration of Messenians to Rhegium, yet still admitting the fact of such migration at the close of the first Messenian war, which would place the foundation of the city earlier than 720 B. C. Though Rhegium was a Chalkidic colony, yet a portion of its inhabitants seem to have been undoubtedly of Messenian origin, and amongst them Anaxilas, despot of the town between 500-470 B. C., who traced his descent through two centuries to a Messenian emigrant named Alkidamidas.[726] The celebrity and power of Anaxilas, just at the time when the ancient history of the Greek towns was beginning to be set forth in prose, and with some degree of system, caused the Messenian element in the population of Rhegium to be noticed prominently; but the town was essentially Chalkidic, connected by colonial sisterhood with the Chalkidic settlements in Sicily,—Zanklê, Naxos, Katana, and Leontini. The original emigrants departed from Chalkis, as a tenth of the citizens consecrated by vow to Apollo in consequence of famine; and the directions of the god, as well as the invitation of the Zanklæans, guided their course to Rhegium. The town was flourishing, and acquired a considerable number of dependent villages around,[727] inhabited doubtless by cultivators of the indigenous population. But it seems to have been often at variance with the conterminous Lokrians, and received one severe defeat, in conjunction with the Tarentines, which will be hereafter recounted.

Between Lokri and the Lakinian cape were situated the Achæan colony of Kaulônia, and Skyllêtium; the latter seemingly included in the domain of Krotôn, though pretending to have been originally founded by Menestheus, the leader of the Athenians at the siege of Troy: Petilia, also, a hill-fortress north-west of the Lakinian cape, as well as Makalla, both comprised in the territory of Krotôn, were affirmed to have been founded by Philoktêtês. Along all this coast of the gulf of Tarentum, there were various establishments ascribed to the heroes of the Trojan war,[728]—Epeius, Philoktêtês, Nestor,—or to their returning troops. Of these establishments, probably the occupants had been small, miscellaneous, unacknowledged bands of Grecian adventurers,[729] who assumed to themselves the most honorable origin which they could imagine, and who became afterwards absorbed into the larger colonial establishments which followed; the latter adopting and taking upon themselves the heroic worship of Philoktêtês or other warriors from Troy, which the prior emigrants had begun.

During the flourishing times of Sybaris and Krotôn, it seems that these two great cities divided the whole length of the coast of the Tarentine gulf, from the spot now called Rocca Imperiale down to the south of the Lakinian cape. Between the point where the dominion of Sybaris terminated on the Tarentine side, and Tarentum itself, there were two considerable Grecian settlements,—Siris, afterwards called Herakleia, and Metapontium. The fertility and attraction of the territory of Siris, with its two rivers, Akiris and Siris, were well known even to the poet Archilochus[730] (660 B. C.), but we do not know the date at which it passed from the indigenous Chônians or Chaonians into the hands of Greek settlers. A citizen of Siris is mentioned among the suitors for the daughter of the Sikyonian Kleisthenês, (580-560 B. C.) We are told that some Kolophonian fugitives, emigrating to escape the dominion of the Lydian kings, attacked and possessed themselves of the spot, giving to it the name Polieion. The Chônians of Siris ascribed to themselves a Trojan origin, exhibiting a wooden image of the Ilian Athênê, which they affirmed to have been brought away by their fugitive ancestors after the capture of Troy. When the town was stormed by the Ionians, many of the inhabitants clung to this relic for protection, but were dragged away and slain by the victors,[731] whose sacrilege was supposed to have been the cause that their settlement was not durable. At the time of the invasion of Greece by Xerxês, the fertile territory of Siritis was considered as still open to be colonized; for the Athenians when their affairs appeared desperate, had this scheme of emigration in reserve as a possible resource;[732] and there were inspired declarations from some of the contemporary prophets, which encouraged them to undertake it. At length, after the town of Thurii had been founded by Athens, in the vicinity of the dismantled Sybaris, the Thurians tried to possess themselves of the Siritid territoiy, but were opposed by the Tarentines.[733] According to the compromise concluded between them, Tarentum was recognized as the metropolis of the colony, but joint possession was allowed both to Tarentines and Thurians. The former transferred the site of the city, under the new name Herakleia, to a spot three miles from the sea, leaving Siris as the place of maritime access to it.[734]