Chapter XXII (1)

WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE — IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL.

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.

[650] Thucyd. vi, 2; Philistus, Fragm. 3, ed. Göller, ap. Diodor.
v, 6. Timæus adopted the opposite opinion (Diodor. _l. c._), also
Ephorus, if we may judge by an indistinct passage of Strabo (vi,
p. 270). Dionysius of Halikarnassus follows Thucydidês (A. R. i,
22).

The opinion of Philistus is of much value on this point, since
he was, or might have been, personally cognizant of Iberian
mercenaries in the service of the elder Dionysius.

[651] Pherekyd. Fragm. 85, ed. Didot; Hellanik. Fr. 53, ed.
Didot; Dionys. Halik. A. R. i, 11, 13, 22; Skymnus Chius, v. 362;
Pausan. viii, 3, 5.

[652] Stephan. Byz. v. Χῖοι.

[653] Aristot. Polit. vii, 9, 3. Ὤκουν δὲ τὸ πρὸς τὴν Ἰαπυγίαν
καὶ τὸν Ἰόνιον Χῶνες (or Χάονες) τὴν καλουμένην Σίριν· ἦσαν δὲ
καὶ οἱ Χῶνες Οἰνωτροὶ τὸ γένος.

Antiochus Fr. 3, 4, 6, 7, ed. Didot; Strabo, vi, p. 254; Hesych.
v. Χώνην, Dionys. Hal. A. R. i, 12.

[654] Livy, viii, 24.

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.

[655] For the early habitation of Sikels or Siculi in Latium and
Campania, see Dionys. Hal. A. R. i, 1-21: it is curious that
Siculi and Sicani, whether the same or different, the primitive
ante-Hellenic population of Sicily, are also numbered as the
ante-Roman population of Rome: see Virgil, Æneid, viii, 328, and
Servius ad Æneid. xi, 317.

The alleged ancient emigration of Evander from Arcadia to Latium
forms a parallel to the emigration of Œnotrus from Arcadia to
southern Italy as recounted by Pherekydês: it seems to have been
mentioned even as early as in one of the Hesiodic poems (Servius
ad Virg. Æn. viii, 138): compare Steph. Byz. v. Παλλάντιον. The
earliest Latin authors appear all to have recognized Evander
and his Arcadian emigrants: see Dionys. Hal. i, 31-32, ii, 9,
and his references to Fabius Pictor and Ælius Tubero, i, 79-80;
also Cato ap. Solinum, c. 2. If the old reading Ἀρκάδων, in
Thucyd. vi, 2 (which Bekker has now altered into Σικελῶν), be
retained, Thucydidês would also stand as witness for a migration
from Arcadia into Italy. A third emigration of Pelasgi, from
Peloponnesus to the river Sarnus in southern Italy (near
Pompeii), was mentioned by Conon (ap. Servium ap. Virg. Æn. vii,
730).

[656] Herodotus (i, 24-167) includes Elea (or Velia) in
Œnotria,—and Tarentum in Italia; while Antiochus considers
Tarentum as in Iapygia, and the southern boundary of the
Tarentine territory as the northern boundary of Italia: Dionysius
of Halikarnassus (A. R. ii, 1) seems to copy from Antiochus when
he extends the Œnotrians along the whole south-western corner
of Italy, within the line drawn from Tarentum to Poseidonia, or
Pæstum. Hence the appellation Οἰνωτρίδες νῆσοι to the two islands
opposite Elea (Strabo, vi, p. 253). Skymnus Chius (v. 247)
recognizes the same boundaries.

Twelve Œnotrian cities are cited by name (in Stephanus
Byzantinus) from the Εὐρώπη of Hekatæus (Frag. 30-39, ed. Didot):
Skylax in his Periplus does not name Œnotrians; he enumerates
Campanians, Samnites, and Lucanians (cap. 9-13). The intimate
connection between Milêtus and Sybaris would enable Hekatæus to
inform himself about the interior Œnotrian country.

Œnotria and Italia together, as conceived by Antiochus and
Herodotus, comprised what was known a century afterwards as
Lucania and Bruttium: see Mannert, Geographie der Griech. und
Römer, part ix, b. 9, ch. i, p. 86. Livy, speaking with reference
to 317 B. C., when the Lucanian nation as well as the Bruttians
were in full vigor, describes only the sea-coast of the lower
sea as Grecian,—“cum omni orâ Græcorum inferi maris a Thuriis
Neapolim et Cumas,” (ix, 19.) Verrius Flaccus considered the
Sikels as _Græci_ (Festus, v, Major Græcia, with Müller’s note).

[657] Sophoklês, Triptolem. Fr. 527, ed. Dindorf. He places
the lake Avernus, which was close to the Campanian Cumæ, in
Tyrrhenia: see Lexicon Sophocleum, ad calc. ed. Brunck, v.
Ἄορνος. Euripidês (Medea, 1310-1326) seems to extend Tyrrhenia to
the strait of Messina.

[658] Aristot. Polit. vii, 9, 3. ᾤκουν δὲ τὸ μὲν πρὸς τὴν
Τυῤῥηνίαν Ὀπικοὶ, καὶ πρότερον καὶ νῦν καλούμενοι τὴν ἐπίκλησιν
Αὔσονες. Festus: “_Ausoniam_ appellavit Auson, Ulyssis et
Calypsûs filius, eam primam partem Italiæ in quâ sunt urbes
Beneventum et Cales: deinde paulatim tota quoque Italia quæ
Apennino finitur, dicta est Ausonia,” etc. The original Ausonia
would thus coincide nearly with the territory called Samnium,
after the Sabine emigrants had conquered it: see Livy, viii, 16;
Strabo, v, p. 250; Virg. Æn. vii, 727, with Servius. Skymnus
Chius (v, 227) has copied from the same source as Festus. For the
extension of Ausonians along various parts of the more southern
coast of Italy, even to Rhegium, as well as to the Liparæan
isles, see Diodor. v, 7-8; Cato, Origg. Fr. lib. iii, ap. Probum
ad Virg. Bucol. v, 2. The Pythian priestess, in directing the
Chalkidic emigrants to Rhegium, says to them,—Ἔνθα πόλιν οἴκιζε,
διδοῖ δέ σοι Αὔσονα χώραν (Diodor. Fragm. xiii, p. 11, ap
Scriptt. Vatic. ed. Maii). Temesa is Ausonian in Strabo, vi, p.
255.

[659] Thucyd. vi. 3; Aristot. ap. Dionys. Hal. A. R. i, 72.
Ἀχαιῶν τινας τῶν ἀπὸ Τροίης ἀνακομιζομένων,—ἐλθεῖν εἰς τὸν τόπον
τοῦτον τῆς Ὀπικῆς, ὃς καλεῖται Λάτιον.

Even in the time of Cato the elder, the Greeks comprehended the
Romans under the general, and with them contemptuous, designation
of Opici (Cato ap. Plin. H. N. xxii, 1: see Antiochus ap. Strab.
v, p. 242).

[660] Thucyd. vi, 2. Σικελοὶ δὲ ἐξ Ἰταλίας φεύγοντες Ὀπικοὺς
διέβησαν ἐς Σικελίαν (see a Fragment of the geographer Menippus
of Pergamus, in Hudson’s Geogr. Minor. i, p. 76). Antiochus
stated that the Sikels were driven out of Italy into Sicily by
the Opicians and Œnotrians; but the Sikels themselves, according
to him, were also Œnotrians (Dionys. H. i, 12-22). It is
remarkable that Antiochus (who wrote at a time when the name of
Rome had not begun to exercise that fascination over men’s minds
which the Roman power afterwards occasioned), in setting forth
the mythical antiquity of the Sikels and Œnotrians, represents
the eponymous Sikelus as an exile from Rome, who came into the
south of Italy to the king Morgês, successor of Italus,—Ἐπεὶ δὲ
Ἰταλὸς κατεγήρα, Μόργης ἐβασίλευσεν. Ἐπὶ τούτου δὲ ἀνὴρ ἀφίκετο
ἐκ Ῥώμης φυγὰς, Σικελὸς ὄνομα αὐτῷ (Antiochus ap. Dionys. H. i,
73: compare c. 12).

Philistus considered Sikelus to be a son of Italus: both he and
Hellanikus believed in early migrations from Italy into Sicily,
but described the emigrants differently (Philistus, Frag. 2, ed.
Didot).

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.

[661] See the learned observations upon the early languages of
Italy and Sicily, which Müller has prefixed to his work on the
Etruscans (Einleitung, i, 12). I transcribe the following summary
of his views respecting the early Italian dialects and races:
“The notions which we thus obtain respecting the early languages
of Italy are as follows: the _Sikel_, a sister language, nearly
allied to the Greek or Pelasgic; the _Latin_, compounded from
the Sikel and from the rougher dialect of the men called
_Aborigines_; the _Oscan_, akin to the Latin in both its two
elements; the language spoken by the Sabine emigrants in their
various conquered territories, _Oscan_; the _Sabine proper_, a
distinct and peculiar language, yet nearly connected with the
non-Grecian element in Latin and Oscan, as well as with the
language of the oldest Ausonians and Aborigines.”

[N. B. This last statement, respecting the original Sabine
language, is very imperfectly made out: it seems equally probable
that the Sabellians may have differed from the Oscans no more
than the Dorians from the Ionians: see Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. tom.
i, p. 69.]

“Such a comparison of languages presents to us a certain view,
which I shall here briefly unfold, of the earliest history of
the Italian races. At a period anterior to all records, a single
people, akin to the Greeks, dwelling extended from the south of
Tuscany down to the straits of Messina, occupies in the upper
part of its territory only the valley of the Tiber,—lower down,
occupies the mountainous districts also, and in the south,
stretches across from sea to sea,—called Sikels, Œnotrians, or
Peucetians. Other mountain tribes, powerful, though not widely
extended, live in the northern Abruzzo and its neighborhood: in
the east, the Sabines, southward from them the cognate Marsi,
more to the west the Aborigines, and among them probably the old
Ausonians or Oscans. About 1000 years prior to the Christian
era, there arises among these tribes—from whom almost all the
popular migrations in ancient Italy have proceeded—a movement
whereby the Aborigines more northward, the Sikels more southward,
are precipitated upon the Sikels of the plains beneath. Many
thousands of the great Sikel nation withdraw to their brethren
the Œnotrians, and by degrees still farther across the strait
to the island of Sicily. Others of them remain stationary in
their residences, and form, in conjunction with the Aborigines,
the Latin nation,—in conjunction with the Ausonians, the Oscan
nation: the latter extends itself over what was afterwards
called Samnium and Campania. Still, the population and power of
these mountain tribes, especially that of the Sabines, goes on
perpetually on the increase: as they pressed onward towards the
Tiber, at the period when Rome was only a single town, so they
also advanced southwards, and conquered,—first, the mountainous
Opica; next, some centuries later, the Opician plain, Campania;
lastly, the ancient country of the Œnotrians, afterwards
denominated Lucania.”

Compare Niebuhr, Römisch. Geschicht. vol. i, p. 80, 2d edit., and
the first chapter of Mr. Donaldson’s Varronianus.

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]

[662] Thucyd. vi, 2; Philistus, Frag. 2, ed. Didot.

[663] Strabo, v, p. 243; Velleius Patercul. i, 5; Eusebius, p
121. M. Raoul Rochette, assuming a different computation of the
date of the Trojan war, pushes the date of Cumæ still farther
back to 1139 B. C. (Histoire des Colonies Grecques, book iv, c.
12, p. 100.)

The mythes of Cumæ extended to a period preceding the Chalkidic
settlement. See the stories of Aristæus and Dædalus ap. Sallust.
Fragment. Incert. p. 204, ed. Delphin.; and Servius ad Virgil.
Æneid. vi, 17. The fabulous Thespiadæ, or primitive Greek
settlers in Sardinia, were supposed in early ages to have left
that island and retired to Cumæ (Diodor. v, 15).

[664] Ephorus, Frag. 52, ed. Didot.

[665] Strabo, v, p. 243; Velleius Paterc. i, 5.

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.

[666] See the site of Cumæ as described by Agathias (on occasion
of the siege of the place by Narses, in 552 A. D.), Histor. i,
8-10; also by Strabo, v, p. 244.

[667] Diodor. iv, 21, v, 71; Polyb. iii, 91; Pliny, H. N. iii,
5; Livy, viii, 22. “In Baiano sinu Campaniæ contra Puteolanam
civitatem lacus sunt duo, Avernus et Lucrinus: qui olim propter
piscium copiam vectigalia magna præstabant,” (Servius ad Virg.
Georgic. ii, 161.)

[668] Strabo, v, p. 243. Καὶ εἰσέπλεόν γε οἱ προθυσόμενοι καὶ
ἱλασόμενοι τοὺς καταχθονίους δαίμονας, ὄντων τῶν ὑφηγουμένων τὰ
τοιάδε ἱερέων, ἠργολαβηκότων τὸν τόπον.

[669] Dionys. H. iv, 61-62, vi, 21; Livy, ii, 34.

[670] See, respecting the transmission of ideas and fables from
the Æolic Kymê to Cumæ in Campania, the first volume of this
History, chap. xv, p. 457.

The father of Hesiod was a native of the Æolic Kymê: we find
in the Hesiodic Theogony (_ad fin._) mention of Latinus as the
son of Odysseus and Circê: Servius cites the same from the
Ἀσπιδοποιΐα of Hesiod (Servius ad Virg. Æn. xii, 162; compare
Cato, Fragment. p. 33, ed. Lion). The great family of the Mamilii
at Tusculum, also derived their origin from Odysseus and Circê
(Livy, i, 49).

The tomb of Elpênôr, the lost companion of Odysseus, was shown at
Circeii in the days of Theophrastus (Hist. Plant. v, 8, 3) and
Skylax (c. 10).

Hesiod notices the promontory of Pelôrus. the strait of Messina,
and the islet of Ortygia near Syracuse (Diodor. iv, 85; Strabo,
i, p. 23).

[671] Livy, ii. 9.

[672] Niebuhr, Römisch. Geschicht. vol. i. p. 76, 2d edit.

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]

[673] The history of Aristodêmus Malakus is given at some length
by Dionysius of Halikarnassus (viii, 3-10).

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.

[674] Livy, ii, 21.

[675] Velleius Patercul. i, 5.

[676] Compare Strabo, v, p. 250; vi. p. 264. “Cumanos Osca
mutavit vicinia,” says Velleius, _l. c._

[677] Diodor. xi, 51; Pindar, Pyth. i, 71.

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]

[678] Thucyd. vi, 3; Strabo, vi, p. 267.

[679] The admixture of Naxian colonists may be admitted, as well
upon the presumption arising from the name, as from the statement
of Hellanikus, ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Χαλκίς.

Ephorus put together into one the Chalkidian and the Megarian
migrations, which Thucydidês represents as distinct (Ephorus ap.
Strabo, vi, p. 267).

[680] Thucyd. vi, 3; Diodor. xiv, 59-88.

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]

[681] Mannert places the boundary of Sikels and Sikans at these
mountains: Otto Siefert (Akragas und sein Gebiet, Hamburg, 1845,
p. 53) places it at the Gemelli Colles, rather more to the
westward,—thus contracting the domain of the Sikans: compare
Diodor. iv, 82-83.

[682] Thucyd. vi, 2.

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.

[683] Mr. Fynes Clinton discusses the era of Syracuse, Fasti
Hellenici, ad B. C. 734, and the same work, vol. ii. Appendix xi,
p. 264.

[684] See Colonel Leake, notes on the Topography of Syracuse, p.
41.

[685] Athenæ. iv, 167; Strabo, ix, p. 380.

[686] Diodor. Frag. Lit. viii, p. 24; Plutarch, Narrat. Amator.
p. 772; Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv, 1212.

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.

[687] Polyænus (v. 5. 1) describes the stratagem of Theoklês on
this occasion.

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]

[688] Polyænus details a treacherous stratagem whereby this
expulsion is said to have been accomplished (v, 5. 2).

[689] Thucydid. vi, 3. Ὕβλωνος τοῦ βασιλέως προδόντος τὴν χώραν
καὶ καθηγησαμένου.

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.

[690] Thucydid. vi, 4; Diodor. Excerpt. Vatican. ed. Maii, Fragm.
xiii, p. 13; Pausanias, viii, 46, 2.

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]

[691] Thucydid. vi, 4.

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]

[692] Strabo, vi, p. 272.

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.

[693] Stephanus Byz. Σικανία, ἡ περίχωρος Ἀκραγαντινῶν. Herodot.
vii, 170; Diodor. iv, 78.

Vessa, the most considerable among the Sikanian townships or
villages, with its prince Teutus, is said to have been conquered
by Phalaris despot of Agrigentum, through a mixture of craft and
force (Polyæn. v, 1, 4).

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.

[694] Of these Sikel or Sikan caverns many traces yet remain: see
Otto Siefert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, pp. 39, 45, 49, 55, and
the work of Captain W. H. Smyth,—Sicily and its Islands, London,
1824, p. 190.

“These cryptæ (observes the latter) appear to have been the
earliest effort of a primitive and pastoral people towards a
town, and are generally without regularity as to shape and
magnitude: in after-ages they perhaps served as a retreat in time
of danger, and as a place of security in case of extraordinary
alarm, for women, children, and valuables. In this light, I was
particularly struck with the resemblance these rude habitations
bore to the caves I had seen in Owhyhee, for similar uses. The
Troglodyte villages of Northern Africa, of which I saw several,
are also precisely the same.”

About the early cave-residences in Sardinia and the Balearic
islands, consult Diodor. v, 15-17.

[695] Thucydid. vi, 45. τὰ περιπόλια τὰ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ (of Syracuse).

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.

[696] Respecting the statical and monetary system, prevalent
among the Italian and Sicilian Greeks, see Aristot. Fragment.
περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ed. Neumann, p. 102; Pollux, iv, 174, ix, 80-87;
and above all, Boeckh, Metrologie, ch. xviii, p. 292, and the
abstract and review of that work in the Classical Museum, No. 1;
also, O. Müller, Die Etrusker, vol. i, p. 309.

The Sicilian Greeks reckoned by talents, each consisting of 120
litræ or libræ: the Æginæan obolus was the equivalent of the
litra, having been the value in silver of a pound-weight of
copper, at the time when the valuation was taken.

The common denominations of money and weight—with the exception
of the talent, the meaning of which was altered while the word
was retained—seem to have been all borrowed by the Italian
and Sicilian Greeks from the Sikel or Italic scale, not from
the Grecian,—νούμμος, λίτρα, δεκάλιτρον, πεντεκοντάλιτρον,
πεντούγκιον, ἑξᾶς, τετρᾶς, τριᾶς, ἥμινα, ἡμιλίτριον (see
Fragments of Epicharmus and Sophron, ap. Ahrens de Dialecto
Doricâ, Appendix, pp 435, 471, 472, and Athenæ. xi, p. 479).