A Smaller History of Greece: from the Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest

, power, and intelligence, afford the most striking proofs of the greatness of this wonderful people. Civil dissensions and a redundant population were the chief causes of the or

he only connexion between them was one of filial affection and of common religious ties. Almost every colonial Greek ci

d the adjoining islands; 2. Those in the western parts of the Mediterranean, in Italy,

hodes and Cos. Most of these colonies were founded in consequence of the changes in the population of Greece which attended the conquest of Peloponnesus by the Dorians. The Ionic cities were early distinguished by a spirit of commercial enterprise, and soon rose superior in wealth and in power to their AEolian and Dorian neighbours. Among the Ionic cities themselves Miletus and Ephesus were the most flourishing, Grecian literature took its rise in the A

y from the AEolic Cyme in Asia and from Chalcis in Euboea, and to have been founded, according to the common chronology, in B.C. 1050. Cumae was for a long

ts of Sicily a succession of flourishing cities. Of these, Syracuse and Agrigentum, both Dorian colonies, became the most powerful. The former was founded by the Corinthians in B.C. 734, and at the

aris was planted in B.C. 720 and Croton in B.C. 710. For two centuries they seem to have lived in harmony, and we know scarcely anything of their history till their fatal contest in B.C. 510, which ended in the ruin of Sybaris. During the whole of this period they were two of the most flourishing cities in all Hellas. Sybaris in particular attained to an extraordinary degree of wealth, and its inhabitants were so notorious for their luxury, effeminacy, and debauchery, that their name has become proverbial for a volu

was immediately tightened if he failed to convince his fellow-citizens of the necessity of the alteration. Rhegium, situated on the straits of Messina, opposite Sicily, was colonised by the Chalcidians, but received a large body of Messenians, who settled here at the close of the Messenian war. Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium about B.C. 500, was of Messenian descent. He seized the Sicilian Zancle on the opposite coast, and change

pain were not numerous. The most celebrated was Massalia, the

sen. It stood on the edge of a range of hills, at the distance of ten miles from the Mediterranean, of which it commanded a fine view. These hills descended by a succession of terraces to the port of the town, called Apollonia. The climate was most salubrious, and the soil was distinguished by e

nce of its commercial activity it soon became a formidable rival to the mother-city. Hence a war broke out between these two states at an early period; and the most ancient naval battle on record was the one fought between their fleets in B.C. 664. The dissensions between the mot

. Of these we can only glance at the most important. The colonies on the coast of Macedonia were chiefly founded by Chalcis and Eretria in Euboea; and the peninsula of Chalcidice, with its three projecting headlands,

bria and Byzantium, both founded by the Megarians, who app