The Historians' History of the World 03

The oldest colonial foundations of this time were like those unorganised expeditions which once poured out upon the islands and the shores of Asia Minor. Such were the settlements of the Achæans and Locrians in southern Italy. As the Greeks, however, were continually being forced out to more distant coasts, their colonisation had to take on a different character. The navigation of the islandless sea in the west, or even the journey to Libya and the stormy Pontus, necessitated a degree of seamanship greater than that possessed by the inhabitants of the agricultural coast districts of the Grecian peninsula, from among whom the settlers of the lands across the sea had until then gone forth. Hence Africa, Bœotia, and Argolis ceased to take an independent part in the colonisation movement. In their place arose cities, hardly or not at all mentioned by Homer, which by their advantageous location had come to be centres of navigation; Chalcis and Eretria on the Euripus, the strait which furnishes the most convenient connection between southern Greece and Thessaly; Megara and Corinth on the isthmus, where the two seas which wash the shores of Greece come within a few miles of each other; Rhodes, Lesbos, and other islands of the Ægean Sea; finally the Ionian coast towns, especially Miletus. Not that all the colonists, who went out from here to seek new homes on distant shores were actually at home in these cities. On the contrary, these cities were only gathering places whither streamed the emigrants from the surrounding regions—all those who found no chance to advance in their old homes or who were driven abroad by love of adventure or by dissatisfaction with political conditions. But the cities, from which the colonising expeditions went out, organised the undertaking; they provided leaders and ships and their institutions served as models for the colonies.

Once founded, however, the colonies were, as a rule, wholly independent of the mother-city. The relation between them was like that between a father and his grown son in Grecian law. The citizen of the mother-city was always respected in the colony; and the colony, on the other hand, could always count on finding support with the mother-city in case of a difficult crisis. That the colony, moreover, remained in especially active intercourse with its mother-city lay in the nature of this colonial relationship; and in the course of time the colonies became the surest supports for the commerce of the mother-city and the best markets for the productions of its industrial activity.

In consequence the recollection of this relationship was kept alive for a long time. But the circumstances which gave rise to the foundation of all the colonies earlier than the sixth century, remain veiled in the darkness of tradition. Historical records were as yet far removed from this period, and the dates of foundations which have been handed down to us are based wholly upon calculations according to generations or upon suppositions of even less value. Such accounts can at the most give us only approximate clews and must in each single instance be compared with other traditions. Only so much is certain that in the first half of the seventh century the settlement of the southern coast of Thrace was in full progress and the Hellenes had already established themselves upon the gulf of Tarentum.

No other field offered the Grecian colonists such favourable conditions as the coasts of Italy and Sicily, beyond the Ionic Sea. Situated in the same latitude as the mother-land, these countries have a climate very similar to that of Greece.

Intercourse between the two shores existed at an early date. Fragments of vases in the Mycenæan style have been found in Messapia, and the pre-Hellenic necropolis in eastern Sicily shows traces of a civilisation which is partially under Mycenæan influence. It even appears that in pre-historic times immigrations from the Balkan peninsula into Italy already took place by way of Otranto. At least it is related that the Chones once dwelt on the western coast of the gulf of Tarentum; and the similarity of names between these people and the Epirot Chaones, the inhabitants of the region about the Acroceraunian promontory, can hardly be accidental. Perhaps this is connected with the fact that the Italici designate the Hellenes as Græci, since the Græci are said to have been an Epirot tribe, which in historic times had wholly disappeared.

Be that as it may, the Hellenes had at all events taken possession of the eastern coast of the present Calabria, during the course of the eighth, or at latest at the beginning of the seventh century. The new settlers called themselves Achæans and thought they were descended from the Achæans in the Peloponnesus. As a matter of fact their dialect is closely related to the Argolian. The Chones of Italy have since disappeared from history, and have probably been merged into one people with the Achæans.