The Hellenes in Italy--Maritime Supremacy of the Tuscans and
Carthaginians
Relations of Italy with Other Lands
In the history of the nations of antiquity a gradual dawn ushered
in the day; and in their case too the dawn was in the east. While
the Italian peninsula still lay enveloped in the dim twilight of
morning, the regions of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean had
already emerged into the full light of a varied and richly developed
civilization. It falls to the lot of most nations in the early
stages of their development to be taught and trained by some rival
sister-nation; and such was destined to be in an eminent degree the
lot of the peoples of Italy. The circumstances of its geographical
position, however, prevented this influence from being brought to
bear upon the peninsula by land. No trace is to be found of any
resort in early times to the difficult route by land between Italy
and Greece. There were in all probability from time immemorial
tracks for purposes of traffic, leading from Italy to the lands
beyond the Alps; the oldest route of the amber trade from the Baltic
joined the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Po--on which account
the delta of the Po appears in Greek legend as the home of amber--and
this route was joined by another leading across the peninsula
over the Apennines to Pisae; but from these regions no elements
of civilization could come to the Italians. It was the seafaring
nations of the east that brought to Italy whatever foreign culture
reached it in early times.
Phoenicians in Italy
The oldest civilized nation on the shores of the Mediterranean, the
Egyptians, were not a seafaring people, and therefore exercised no
influence on Italy. But the same may be with almost equal truth
affirmed of the Phoenicians. It is true that, issuing from their
narrow home on the extreme eastern verge of the Mediterranean,
they were the first of all known races to venture forth in floating
houses on the bosom of the deep, at first for the purpose of
fishing and dredging, but soon also for the prosecution of trade.
They were the first to open up maritime commerce; and at an incredibly
early period they traversed the Mediterranean even to its furthest
extremity in the west. Maritime stations of the Phoenicians appear
on almost all its coasts earlier than those of the Hellenes: in
Hellas itself, in Crete and Cyprus, in Egypt, Libya, and Spain, and
likewise on the western Italian main. Thucydides tells us that all
around Sicily, before the Greeks came thither or at least before
they had established themselves there in any considerable numbers,
the Phoenicians had set up their factories on the headlands
and islets, not with a view to gain territory, but for the sake
of trading with the natives. But it was otherwise in the case of
continental Italy. No sure proof has hitherto been given of the
existence of any Phoenician settlement there excepting one, a Punic
factory at Caere, the memory of which has been preserved partly by
the appellation -Punicum- given to a little village on the Caerite
coast, partly by the other name of the town of Caere itself,
-Agylla-, which is not, as idle fiction asserts, of Pelasgic origin,
but is a Phoenician word signifying the "round town"--precisely
the appearance which Caere presents when seen from the sea. That
this station and any similar establishments which may have elsewhere
existed on the coasts of Italy were neither of much importance nor
of long standing, is evident from their having disappeared almost
without leaving a trace. We have not the smallest reason to think
them older than the Hellenic settlements of a similar kind on the
same coasts. An evidence of no slight weight that Latium at least
first became acquainted with the men of Canaan through the medium
of the Hellenes is furnished by the Latin appellation "Poeni," which
is borrowed from the Greek. All the oldest relations, indeed, of
the Italians to the civilization of the east point decidedly towards
Greece; and the rise of the Phoenician factory at Caere may be very
well explained, without resorting to the pre-Hellenic period, by
the subsequent well-known relations between the commercial state
of Caere and Carthage. In fact, when we recall the circumstance
that the earliest navigation was and continued to be essentially
of a coasting character, it is plain that scarcely any country on
the Mediterranean lay so remote from the Phoenicians as the Italian
mainland. They could only reach it either from the west coast
of Greece or from Sicily; and it may well be believed that the
seamanship of the Hellenes became developed early enough to anticipate
the Phoenicians in braving the dangers of the Adriatic and of the
Tyrrhene seas. There is no ground therefore for the assumption that
any direct influence was originally exercised by the Phoenicians over
the Italians. To the subsequent relations between the Phoenicians
holding the supremacy of the western Mediterranean and the Italians
inhabiting the shores of the Tyrrhene sea our narrative will return
in the sequel.
Greeks in Italy--Home of the Greek Immigrants
To all appearance, therefore, the Hellenic mariners were the first
among the inhabitants of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to
navigate the coasts of Italy. Of the important questions however
as to the region from which, and as to the period at which, the Greek
seafarers came thither, only the former admits of being answered
with some degree of precision and fulness. The Aeolian and Ionian
coast of Asia Minor was the region where Hellenic maritime traffic
first became developed on a large scale, and whence issued the
Greeks who explored the interior of the Black Sea on the one hand
and the coasts of Italy on the other. The name of the Ionian Sea,
which was retained by the waters intervening between Epirus and
Sicily, and that of the Ionian gulf, the term by which the Greeks
in earlier times designated the Adriatic Sea, are memorials of
the fact that the southern and eastern coasts of Italy were once
discovered by seafarers from Ionia. The oldest Greek settlement in
Italy, Kyme, was, as its name and legend tell, founded by the town
of the same name on the Anatolian coast. According to trustworthy
Hellenic tradition, the Phocaeans of Asia Minor were the first of
the Hellenes to traverse the more remote western sea. Other Greeks
soon followed in the paths which those of Asia Minor had opened up;
lonians from Naxos and from Chalcis in Euboea, Achaeans, Locrians,
Rhodians, Corinthians, Megarians, Messenians, Spartans. After the
discovery of America the civilized nations of Europe vied with one
another in sending out expeditions and forming settlements there;
and the new settlers when located amidst barbarians recognized their
common character and common interests as civilized Europeans more
strongly than they had done in their former home. So it was with
the new discovery of the Greeks. The privilege of navigating the
western waters and settling on the western land was not the exclusive
property of a single Greek province or of a single Greek stock,
but a common good for the whole Hellenic nation; and, just as in
the formation of the new North American world, English and French,
Dutch and German settlements became mingled and blended, Greek Sicily
and "Great Greece" became peopled by a mixture of all sorts of
Hellenic races often so amalgamated as to be no longer distinguishable.
Leaving out of account some settlements occupying a more isolated
position--such as that of the Locrians with its offsets Hipponium
and Medama, and the settlement of the Phocaeans which was not founded
till towards the close of this period, Hyele (Velia, Elea)--we may
distinguish in a general view three leading groups. The original
Ionian group, comprehended under the name of the Chalcidian towns,
included in Italy Cumae with the other Greek settlements at Vesuvius
and Rhegium, and in Sicily Zankle (afterwards Messana), Naxos,
Catana, Leontini, and Himera. The Achaean group embraced Sybaris
and the greater part of the cities of Magna Graecia. The Dorian
group comprehended Syracuse, Gela, Agrigentum, and the majority
of the Sicilian colonies, while in Italy nothing belonged to it
but Taras (Tarentum) and its offset Heraclea. On the whole the
preponderance lay with the immigrants who belonged to the more
ancient Hellenic influx, that of the lonians and the stocks settled
in the Peloponnesus before the Doric immigration. Among the Dorians
only the communities with a mixed population, such as Corinth and
Megara, took a special part, whereas the purely Doric provinces had
but a subordinate share in the movement. This result was naturally
to be expected, for the lonians were from ancient times a trading
and sea-faring people, while it was only at a comparatively late
period that the Dorian stocks descended from their inland mountains
to the seaboard, and they always kept aloof from maritime commerce.
The different groups of immigrants are very clearly distinguishable,
especially by their monetary standards. The Phocaean settlers coined
according to the Babylonian standard which prevailed in Asia. The
Chalcidian towns followed in the earliest times the Aeginetan, in
other words, that which originally prevailed throughout all European
Greece, and more especially the modification of it which is found
occurring in Euboea. The Achaean communities coined by the Corinthian
standard; and lastly the Doric colonies followed that which Solon
introduced in Attica in the year of Rome 160, with the exception
of Tarentum and Heraclea, which in their principal pieces adopted
rather the standard of their Achaean neighbours than that of the
Dorians in Sicily.
Time of the Greek Immigration
The dates of the earlier voyages and settlements will probably always
remain enveloped in darkness. We may still, however, distinctly
recognize a certain order of sequence. In the oldest Greek document,
which belongs, like the earliest intercourse with the west, to
the lonians of Asia Minor--the Homeric poems--the horizon scarcely
extends beyond the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Sailors
driven by storms into the western sea might have brought to Asia
Minor accounts of the existence of a western land and possibly
also of its whirlpools and island-mountains vomiting fire: but in
the age of the Homeric poetry there was an utter want of trustworthy
information respecting Sicily and Italy, even in that Greek land
which was the earliest to enter into intercourse with the west;
and the story-tellers and poets of the east could without fear of
contradiction fill the vacant realms of the west, as those of the
west in their turn filled the fabulous east, with their castles in
the air. In the poems of Hesiod the outlines of Italy and Sicily
appear better defined; there is some acquaintance with the native
names of tribes, mountains, and cities in both countries; but Italy
is still regarded as a group of islands. On the other hand, in
all the literature subsequent to Hesiod, Sicily and even the whole
coast of Italy appear as known, at least in a general sense, to the
Hellenes. The order of succession of the Greek settlements may in
like manner be ascertained with some degree of precision. Thucydides
evidently regarded Cumae as the earliest settlement of note in the
west; and certainly he was not mistaken. It is true that many a
landing-place lay nearer at hand for the Greek mariner, but none
were so well protected from storms and from barbarians as the island
of Ischia, upon which the town was originally situated; and that
such were the prevailing considerations that led to this settlement,
is evident from the very position which was subsequently selected
for it on the mainland--the steep but well-protected cliff, which
still bears to the present day the venerable name of the Anatolian
mother-city. Nowhere in Italy, accordingly, were the scenes of
the legends of Asia Minor so vividly and tenaciously localized as
in the district of Cumae, where the earliest voyagers to the west,
full of those legends of western wonders, first stepped upon the
fabled land and left the traces of that world of story, which they
believed that they were treading, in the rocks of the Sirens and
the lake of Avernus leading to the lower world. On the supposition,
moreover, that it was in Cumae that the Greeks first became the
neighbours of the Italians, it is easy to explain why the name
of that Italian stock which was settled immediately around Cumae,
the name of Opicans, came to be employed by them for centuries
afterwards to designate the Italians collectively. There is a
further credible tradition, that a considerable interval elapsed
between the settlement at Cumae and the main Hellenic immigration
into Lower Italy and Sicily, and that in this immigration Ionians
from Chalcis and from Naxos took the lead. Naxos in Sicily is said
to have been the oldest of all the Greek towns founded by strict
colonization in Italy or Sicily; the Achaean and Dorian colonizations
followed, but not until a later period.
It appears, however, to be quite impossible to fix the dates of
this series of events with even approximate accuracy. The founding
of the Achaean city of Sybaris in 33, and that of the Dorian city
Tarentum in 46, are probably the most ancient dates in Italian
history, the correctness, or at least approximation to correctness,
of which may be looked upon as established. But how far beyond
that epoch the sending forth of the earlier Ionian colonies reached
back, is quite as uncertain as is the age which gave birth to the
poems of Hesiod or even of Homer. If Herodotus is correct in the
period which he assigns to Homer, the Greeks were still unacquainted
with Italy a century before the foundation of Rome. The date thus
assigned however, like all other statements respecting the Homeric
age, is matter not of testimony, but of inference; and any one who
carefully weighs the history of the Italian alphabets as well as
the remarkable fact that the Italians had become acquainted with
the Greek people before the name "Hellenes" had emerged for the
race, and the Italians borrowed their designation for the Hellenes
from the stock of the -Grai- or -Graeci- that early fell into
abeyance in Hellas,(1) will be inclined to carry back the earliest
intercourse of the Italians with the Greeks to an age considerably
mere remote.
Character of the Greek Immigration
The history of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks forms no part of
the history of Italy; the Hellenic colonists of the west always
retained the closest connection with their original home and
participated in the national festivals and privileges of Hellenes.
But it is of importance even as bearing on Italy, that we should
indicate the diversities of character that prevailed in the Greek
settlements there, and at least exhibit some of the leading features
which enabled the Greek colonization to exercise so varied an
influence on Italy.
The League of the Achaen Cities
Of all the Greek settlements, that which retained most thoroughly
its distinctive character and was least affected by influences from
without was the settlement which gave birth to the league of the
Achaean cities, composed of the towns of Siris, Pandosia, Metabus
or Metapontum, Sybaris with its offsets Posidonia and Laus, Croton,
Caulonia, Temesa, Terina, and Pyxus. These colonists, taken as a
whole, belonged to a Greek stock which steadfastly adhered to its
own peculiar dialect, having closest affinity with the Doric, and
for long retained no less steadfastly the old national Hellenic
mode of writing, instead of adopting the more recent alphabet which
had elsewhere come into general use; and which preserved its own
nationality, as distinguished alike from the barbarians and from other
Greeks, by the firm bond of a federal constitution. The language
of Polybius regarding the Achaean symmachy in the Peloponnesus may
be applied also to these Italian Achaeans; "Not only did they live
in federal and friendly communion, but they made use of like laws,
like weights, measures, and coins, as well as of the same magistrates,
councillors, and judges."
This league of the Achaean cities was strictly a colonization. The
cities had no harbours--Croton alone had a paltry roadstead--and
they had no commerce of their own; the Sybarite prided himself on
growing gray between the bridges of his lagoon-city, and Milesians
and Etruscans bought and sold for him. These Achaean Greeks,
however, were not merely in possession of a narrow belt along the
coast, but ruled from sea to sea in the "land of wine" and "of
oxen" (--Oinotria--, --Italia--) or the "great Hellas;" the native
agricultural population was compelled to farm their lands and to
pay to them tribute in the character of clients or even of serfs.
Sybaris--in its time the largest city in Italy--exercised dominion
over four barbarian tribes and five-and-twenty townships, and was
able to found Laus and Posidonia on the other sea. The exceedingly
fertile low grounds of the Crathis and Bradanus yielded a superabundant
produce to the Sybarites and Metapontines--it was there perhaps
that grain was first cultivated for exportation. The height of
prosperity which these states in an incredibly short time attained
is strikingly attested by the only surviving works of art of
these Italian Achaeans, their coins of chaste antiquely beautiful
workmanship--the earliest monuments of art and writing in Italy
which we possess, as it can be shown that they had already begun to
be coined in 174. These coins show that the Achaeans of the west
did not simply participate in the noble development of plastic art
that was at this very time taking place in the motherland, but were
even superior in technical skill. For, while the silver pieces
which were in use about that time in Greece proper and among the
Dorians in Italy were thick, often stamped only on one side, and
in general without inscription, the Italian Achaeans with great
and independent skill struck from two similar dies partly cut in
relief, partly sunk, large thin silver coins always furnished with
inscriptions, and displaying the advanced organization of a civilized
state in the mode of impression, by which they were carefully
protected from the process of counterfeiting usual in that age--the
plating of inferior metal with thin silver-foil.
Nevertheless this rapid bloom bore no fruit. Even Greeks speedily
lost all elasticity of body and of mind in a life of indolence, in
which their energies were never tried either by vigorous resistance
on the part of the natives or by hard labour of their own. None
of the brilliant names in Greek art or literature shed glory on the
Italian Achaeans, while Sicily could claim ever so many of them,
and even in Italy the Chalcidian Rhegium could produce its Ibycus
and the Doric Tarentum its Archytas. With this people, among whom
the spit was for ever turning on the hearth, nothing flourished from
the outset but boxing. The rigid aristocracy which early gained
the helm in the several communities, and which found in case of need
a sure reserve of support in the federal power, prevented the rise
of tyrants; but the danger to be apprehended was that the government
of the best might be converted into a government of the few,
especially if the privileged families in the different communities
should combine to assist each other in carrying out their designs.
Such was the predominant aim in the combination of mutually
pledged "friends" which bore the name of Pythagoras. It enjoined
the principle that the ruling class should be "honoured like gods,"
and that the subject class should be "held in subservience like
beasts," and by such theory and practice provoked a formidable
reaction, which terminated in the annihilation of the Pythagorean
"friends" and the renewal of the ancient federal constitution. But
frantic party feuds, insurrections en masse of the slaves, social
abuses of all sorts, attempts to supply in practice an impracticable
state-philosophy, in short, all the evils of demoralized civilization
never ceased to rage in the Achaean communities, till under the
accumulated pressure their political power utterly broke down.
It is no matter of wonder therefore that the Achaeans settled in
Italy exercised less influence on its civilization than the other
Greek settlements. An agricultural people, they had less occasion
than those engaged in commerce to extend their influence beyond
their political bounds. Within their own dominions they enslaved
the native population and crushed the germs of their national
development as Italians, while they refused to open up to them
by means of complete Hellenization a new career. In this way the
Greek characteristics, which were able elsewhere to retain a vigorous
vitality notwithstanding all political misfortunes, disappeared
more rapidly, more completely, and more ingloriously in Sybaris
and Metapontum, in Croton and Posidonia, than in any other region;
and the bilingual mongrel peoples, that arose in subsequent times
out of the remains of the native Italians and Achaeans and the more
recent immigrants of Sabellian descent, never attained any real
prosperity. This catastrophe, however, belongs in point of time
to the succeeding period.
Iono-Dorian Towns
The settlements of the other Greeks were of a different character,
and exercised a very different effect upon Italy. They by no means
despised agriculture and the acquisition of territory; it was not
the wont of the Hellenes, at least when they had reached their full
vigour, to rest content after the manner of the Phoenicians with a
fortified factory in the midst of a barbarian land. But all their
cities were founded primarily and especially for the sake of trade,
and accordingly, altogether differing from those of the Achaeans,
they were uniformly established beside the best harbours and
lading-places. These cities were very various in their origin and
in the occasion and period of their respective foundations; but
there subsisted between them a certain fellowship, as in the common
use by all of these towns of certain modern forms of the alphabet,(2)
and in the very Dorism of their language, which made its way at an
early date even into those towns that, like Cumae for example,(3)
originally spoke the soft Ionic dialect. These settlements were
of very various degrees of importance in their bearing on the
development of Italy: it is sufficient at present to mention those
which exercised a decided influence over the destinies of the
Italian races, the Doric Tarentum and the Ionic Cumae.
Tarentum
Of all the Hellenic settlements in Italy, Tarentum was destined
to play the most brilliant part. The excellent harbour, the only
good one on the whole southern coast, rendered the city the natural
emporium for the traffic of the south of Italy, and for some portion
even of the commerce of the Adriatic. The rich fisheries of its
gulf, the production and manufacture of its excellent wool, and
the dyeing of it with the purple juice of the Tarentine -murex-,
which rivalled that of Tyre--both branches of industry introduced
there from Miletus in Asia Minor--employed thousands of hands, and
added to the carrying trade a traffic of export. The coins struck
at Tarentum in greater quantity than anywhere else in Grecian
Italy, and struck pretty numerously even in gold, furnish to us a
significant attestation of the lively and widely extended commerce
of the Tarentines. At this epoch, when Tarentum was still contending
with Sybaris for the first place among the Greek cities of Lower
Italy, its extensive commercial connections must have been already
forming; but the Tarentines seem never to have steadily and
successfully directed their efforts to a substantial extension of
their territory after the manner of the Achaean cities.
Greek Cities Near Vesuvius
While the most easterly of the Greek settlements in Italy thus rapidly
rose into splendour, those which lay furthest to the north, in the
neighbourhood of Vesuvius, attained a more moderate prosperity.
There the Cumaeans had crossed from the fertile island of Aenaria
(Ischia) to the mainland, and had built a second home on a hill
close by the sea, from whence they founded the seaport of Dicaearchia
(afterwards Puteoli) and, moreover, the "new city" Neapolis. They
lived, like the Chalcidian cities generally in Italy and Sicily,
in conformity with the laws which Charondas of Catana (about 100)
had established, under a constitution democratic but modified by
a high census, which placed the power in the hands of a council
of members selected from the wealthiest men--a constitution which
proved lasting and kept these cities free, upon the whole, from
the tyranny alike of usurpers and of the mob. We know little as to
the external relations of these Campanian Greeks. They remained,
whether from necessity or from choice, confined to a district of
even narrower limits than the Tarentines; and issuing from it not
for purposes of conquest and oppression, but for the holding of
peaceful commercial intercourse with the natives, they created the
means of a prosperous existence for themselves, and at the same time
took the foremost place among the missionaries of Greek civilization
in Italy.
Relations of the Adriatic Regions to the Greeks
While on the one side of the straits of Rhegium the whole southern
coast of the mainland and its western coast as far as Vesuvius,
and on the other the larger eastern half of the island of Sicily,
were Greek territory, the west coast of Italy northward of Vesuvius
and the whole of the east coast were in a position essentially
different. No Greek settlements arose on the Italian seaboard of
the Adriatic; and with this we may evidently connect the comparatively
small number and subordinate importance of the Greek colonies
planted on the opposite Illyrian shore and on the numerous adjacent
islands. Two considerable mercantile towns, Epidamnus or Dyrrachium
(now Durazzo, 127), and Apollonia (near Avlona, about 167), were
founded upon the portion of this coast nearest to Greece during
the regal period of Rome; but no old Greek colony can be pointed
out further to the north, with the exception perhaps of the
insignificant settlement at Black Corcyra (Curzola, about 174?). No
adequate explanation has yet been given why the Greek colonization
developed itself in this direction to so meagre an extent. Nature
herself appeared to direct the Hellenes thither, and in fact from
the earliest times there existed a regular traffic to that region
from Corinth and still more from the settlement at Corcyra (Corfu)
founded not long after Rome (about 44); a traffic, which had as its
emporia on the Italian coast the towns of Spina and Atria, situated
at the mouth of the Po. The storms of the Adriatic, the inhospitable
character at least of the Illyrian coasts, and the barbarism of
the natives are manifestly not in themselves sufficient to explain
this fact. But it was a circumstance fraught with the most momentous
consequences for Italy, that the elements of civilization which
came from the east did not exert their influence on its eastern
provinces directly, but reached them only through the medium of those
that lay to the west. The Adriatic commerce carried on by Corinth
and Corcyra was shared by the most easterly mercantile city of
Magna Graecia, the Doric Tarentum, which by the possession of Hydrus
(Otranto) had the command, on the Italian side, of the entrance of
the Adriatic. Since, with the exception of the ports at the mouth
of the Po, there were in those times no emporia worthy of mention
along the whole east coast--the rise of Ancona belongs to a far
later period, and later still the rise of Brundisium--it may well
be conceived that the mariners of Epidamnus and Apollonia frequently
discharged their cargoes at Tarentum. The Tarentines had also much
intercourse with Apulia by land; all the Greek civilization to be
met with in the south-east of Italy owed its existence to them.
That civilization, however, was during the present period only in
its infancy; it was not until a later epoch that the Hellenism of
Apulia was developed.
Relations of the Western Italians to the Greeks
It cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that the west coast
of Italy northward of Vesuvius was frequented in very early times
by the Hellenes, and that there were Hellenic factories on its
promontories and islands. Probably the earliest evidence of such
voyages is the localizing of the legend of Odysseus on the coasts
of the Tyrrhene Sea.(4) When men discovered the isles of Aeolus
in the Lipari islands, when they pointed out at the Lacinian cape
the isle of Calypso, at the cape of Misenum that of the Sirens,
at the cape of Circeii that of Circe, when they recognized in the
steep promontory of Terracina the towering burial-mound of Elpenor,
when the Laestrygones were provided with haunts near Caieta and
Formiae, when the two sons of Ulysses and Circe, Agrius, that is
the "wild," and Latinus, were made to rule over the Tyrrhenians in
the "inmost recess of the holy islands," or, according to a more
recent version, Latinus was called the son of Ulysses and Circe,
and Auson the son of Ulysses and Calypso--we recognize in these
legends ancient sailors' tales of the seafarers of Ionia, who
thought of their native home as they traversed the Tyrrhene Sea.
The same noble vividness of feeling, which pervades the Ionic poem
of the voyages of Odysseus, is discernible in this fresh localization
of the same legend at Cumae itself and throughout the regions
frequented by the Cumaean mariners.
Other traces of these very ancient voyages are to be found in the
Greek name of the island Aethalia (Ilva, Elba), which appears to
have been (after Aenaria) one of the places earliest occupied by
Greeks, perhaps also in that of the seaport Telamon in Etruria;
and further in the two townships on the Caerite coast, Pyrgi (near
S. Severa) and Alsium (near Palo), the Greek origin of which is
indicated beyond possibility of mistake not only by their names,
but also by the peculiar architecture of the walls of Pyrgi, which
differs essentially in character from that of the walls of Caere
and the Etruscan cities generally. Aethalia, the "fire-island,"
with its rich mines of copper and especially of iron, probably
sustained the chief part in this commerce, and there in all likelihood
the foreigners had their central settlement and seat of traffic
with the natives; the more especially as they could not have found
the means of smelting the ores on the small and not well-wooded
island without intercourse with the mainland. The silver mines
of Populonia also on the headland opposite to Elba were perhaps
already known to the Greeks and wrought by them.
If, as was undoubtedly the case, the foreigners, ever in those times
intent on piracy and plunder as well as trade, did not fail, when
opportunity offered, to levy contributions on the natives and to
carry them off as slaves, the natives on their part exercised the
right of retaliation; and that the Latins and Tyrrhenes retaliated
with greater energy and better fortune than their neighbours in
the south of Italy, is attested not merely by the legends to that
effect, but by the actual results. In these regions the Italians
succeeded in resisting the foreigners and in retaining, or at any
rate soon resuming, the mastery not merely of their own mercantile
cities and mercantile ports, but also of their own sea. The same
Hellenic invasion which crushed and denationalized the races of
the south of Italy, directed the energies of the peoples of Central
Italy--very much indeed against the will of their instructors--towards
navigation and the founding of towns. It must have been in this
quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for
the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks. Here too we first
encounter great mercantile cities, particularly Caere in southern
Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from their
Italian names as well as from their being situated at some distance
from the sea, were--like the exactly similar commercial towns at
the mouth of the Po, Spina and Atria, and Ariminum further to the
south--certainly not Greek, but Italian foundations. It is not
in our power, as may easily be supposed, to exhibit the historical
course of this earliest reaction of Italian nationality against
foreign aggression; but we can still recognize the fact, which was
of the greatest importance as bearing upon the further development
of Italy, that this reaction took a different course in Latium and
in southern Etruria from that which it exhibited in the properly
Tuscan and adjoining provinces.
Hellenes and Latins
Legend itself contrasts in a significant manner the Latin with
the "wild Tyrrhenian," and the peaceful beach at the mouth of the
Tiber with the inhospitable shore of the Volsci. This cannot mean
that Greek colonization was tolerated in some of the provinces of
Central Italy, but not permitted in others. Northward of Vesuvius
there existed no independent Greek community at all in historical
times; if Pyrgi once was such, it must have already reverted,
before the period at which our tradition begins, into the hands of
the Italians or in other words of the Caerites. But in southern
Etruria, in Latium, and likewise on the east coast, peaceful intercourse
with the foreign merchants was protected and encouraged; and such
was not the case elsewhere. The position of Caere was especially
remarkable. "The Caerites," says Strabo, "were held in much repute
among the Hellenes for their bravery and integrity, and because,
powerful though they were, they abstained from robbery." It is
not piracy that is thus referred to, for in this the merchant of
Caere must have indulged like every other. But Caere was a sort
of free port for Phoenicians as well as Greeks. We have already
mentioned the Phoenician station--subsequently called Punicum--and
the two Hellenic stations of Pyrgi and Alsium.(5) It was these
ports that the Caerites refrained from robbing, and it was beyond
doubt through this tolerant attitude that Caere, which possessed
but a wretched roadstead and had no mines in its neighbourhood,
early attained so great prosperity and acquired, in reference to
the earliest Greek commerce, an importance even greater than the
cities of the Italians destined by nature as emporia at the mouths
of the Tiber and Po. The cities we have just named are those which
appear as holding primitive religious intercourse with Greece. The
first of all barbarians to present gifts to the Olympian Zeus was
the Tuscan king Arimnus, perhaps a ruler of Ariminum. Spina and
Caere had their special treasuries in the temple of the Delphic
Apollo, like other communities that had regular dealings with the
shrine; and the sanctuary at Delphi, as well as the Cumaean oracle,
is interwoven with the earliest traditions of Caere and of Rome.
These cities, where the Italians held peaceful sway and carried
on friendly traffic with the foreign merchant, became preeminently
wealthy and powerful, and were genuine marts not only for Hellenic
merchandise, but also for the germs of Hellenic civilization.
Hellenes and Etruscans--Etruscan Maritime Power
Matters stood on a different footing with the "wild Tyrrhenians."
The same causes, which in the province of Latium, and in the districts
on the right bank of the Tiber and along the lower course of the
Po that were perhaps rather subject to Etruscan supremacy than
strictly Etruscan, had led to the emancipation of the natives
from the maritime power of the foreigner, led in Etruria proper to
the development of piracy and maritime ascendency, in consequence
possibly of the difference of national character disposing the people
to violence and pillage, or it may be for other reasons with which
we are not acquainted. The Etruscans were not content with dislodging
the Greeks from Aethalia and Populonia; even the individual trader
was apparently not tolerated by them, and soon Etruscan privateers
roamed over the sea far and wide, and rendered the name of the
Tyrrhenians a terror to the Greeks. It was not without reason that
the Greeks reckoned the grapnel as an Etruscan invention, and called
the western sea of Italy the sea of the Tuscans. The rapidity
with which these wild corsairs multiplied and the violence of their
proceedings in the Tyrrhene Sea in particular, are very clearly
shown by their establishment on the Latin and Campanian coasts.
The Latins indeed maintained their ground in Latium proper, and
the Greeks at Vesuvius; but between them and by their side the
Etruscans held sway in Antium and in Surrentum. The Volscians became
clients of the Etruscans; their forests contributed the keels for
the Etruscan galleys; and seeing that the piracy of the Antiates was
only terminated by the Roman occupation, it is easy to understand
why the coast of the southern Volscians bore among Greek mariners
the name of the Laestrygones. The high promontory of Sorrento with
the cliff of Capri which is still more precipitous but destitute
of any harbour--a station thoroughly adapted for corsairs on the
watch, commanding a prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea between the bays
of Naples and Salerno--was early occupied by the Etruscans. They are
affirmed even to have founded a "league of twelve towns" of their
own in Campania, and communities speaking Etruscan still existed in
its inland districts in times quite historical. These settlements
were probably indirect results of the maritime dominion of
the Etruscans in the Campanian sea, and of their rivalry with the
Cumaeans at Vesuvius.
Etruscan Commerce
The Etruscans however by no means confined themselves to robbery
and pillage. The peaceful intercourse which they held with Greek
towns is attested by the gold and silver coins which, at least from
the year 200, were struck by the Etruscan cities, and in particular
by Populonia, after a Greek model and a Greek standard. The
circumstance, moreover, that these coins are modelled not upon
those of Magna Graecia, but rather upon those of Attica and even
Asia Minor, is perhaps an indication of the hostile attitude in
which the Etruscans stood towards the Italian Greeks. For commerce
they in fact enjoyed the most favourable position, far more
advantageous than that of the inhabitants of Latium. Inhabiting
the country from sea to sea, they commanded the great Italian free
ports on the western waters, the mouths of the Po and the Venice
of that time on the eastern sea, and the land route which from
ancient times led from Pisa on the Tyrrhene Sea to Spina on the
Adriatic, while in the south of Italy they commanded the rich plains
of Capua and Nola. They were the holders of the most important
Italian articles of export, the iron of Aethalia, the copper
of Volaterrae and Campania, the silver of Populonia, and even the
amber which was brought to them from the Baltic.(6) Under the
protection of their piracy, which constituted as it were a rude
navigation act, their own commerce could not fail to flourish.
It need not surprise us to find Etruscan and Milesian merchants
competing in the market of Sybaris, nor need we be astonished to
learn that the combination of privateering and commerce on a great
scale generated the unbounded and senseless luxury, in which the
vigour of Etruria early wasted away.
Rivalry between the Phoenicians and Hellenes
While in Italy the Etruscans and, although in a lesser degree, the
Latins thus stood opposed to the Hellenes, warding them off and
partly treating them as enemies, this antagonism to some extent
necessarily affected the rivalry which then above all dominated the
commerce and navigation of the Mediterranean--the rivalry between
the Phoenicians and Hellenes. This is not the place to set forth
in detail how, during the regal period of Rome, these two great nations
contended for supremacy on all the shores of the Mediterranean, in
Greece even and Asia Minor, in Crete and Cyprus, on the African,
Spanish, and Celtic coasts. This struggle did not take place directly
on Italian soil, but its effects were deeply and permanently felt
in Italy. The fresh energies and more universal endowments of
the younger competitor had at first the advantage everywhere. Not
only did the Hellenes rid themselves of the Phoenician factories
in their own European and Asiatic homes, but they dislodged the
Phoenicians also from Crete and Cyprus, gained a footing in Egypt
and Cyrene, and possessed themselves of Lower Italy and the larger
eastern half of the island of Sicily. On all hands the small trading
stations of the Phoenicians gave way before the more energetic
colonization of the Greeks. Selinus (126) and Agrigentum (174)
were founded in western Sicily; the more remote western sea was
traversed, Massilia was built on the Celtic coast (about 150), and
the shores of Spain were explored, by the bold Phocaeans from Asia
Minor. But about the middle of the second century the progress of
Hellenic colonization was suddenly arrested; and there is no doubt
that the cause of this arrest was the contemporary rapid rise of
Carthage, the most powerful of the Phoenician cities in Libya--a
rise manifestly due to the danger with which Hellenic aggression
threatened the whole Phoenician race. If the nation which had
opened up maritime commerce on the Mediterranean had been already
dislodged by its younger rival from the sole command of the western
half, from the possession of both lines of communication between
the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean, and from the
monopoly of the carrying trade between east and west, the sovereignty
at least of the seas to the west of Sardinia and Sicily might
still be saved for the Orientals; and to its maintenance Carthage
applied all the tenacious and circumspect energy peculiar to the
Aramaean race. Phoenician colonization and Phoenician resistance
assumed an entirely different character. The earlier Phoenician
settlements, such as those in Sicily described by Thucydides, were
mercantile factories: Carthage subdued extensive territories with
numerous subjects and powerful fortresses. Hitherto the Phoenician
settlements had stood isolated in opposition to the Greeks; now
the powerful Libyan city centralized within its sphere the whole
warlike resources of those akin to it in race with a vigour to
which the history of the Greeks can produce nothing parallel.
Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes
Perhaps the element in this reaction which exercised the most
momentous influence in the sequel was the close relation into which
the weaker Phoenicians entered with the natives of Sicily and Italy
in order to resist the Hellenes. When the Cnidians and Rhodians
made an attempt about 175 to establish themselves at Lilybaeum, the
centre of the Phoenician settlements in Sicily, they were expelled
by the natives--the Elymi of Segeste--in concert with the Phoenicians.
When the Phocaeans settled about 217 at Alalia (Aleria) in Corsica
opposite to Caere, there appeared for the purpose of expelling
them a combined fleet of Etruscans and Carthaginians, numbering
a hundred and twenty sail; and although in the naval battle that
ensued--one of the earliest known in history-the fleet of the
Phocaeans, which was only half as strong, claimed the victory, the
Carthaginians and Etruscans gained the object which they had in
view in the attack; the Phocaeans abandoned Corsica, and preferred
to settle at Hyde (Velia) on the less exposed coast of Lucania. A
treaty between Etruria and Carthage not only established regulations
regarding the import of goods and the giving due effect to rights,
but included also an alliance-in-arms (--summachia--), the serious
import of which is shown by that very battle of Alalia. It is a
significant indication of the position of the Caerites, that they
stoned the Phocaean captives in the market at Caere and then sent
an embassy to the Delphic Apollo to atone for the crime.
Latium did not join in these hostilities against the Hellenes; on
the contrary, we find friendly relations subsisting in very ancient
times between the Romans and the Phocaeans in Velia as well as in
Massilia, and the Ardeates are even said to have founded in concert
with the Zacynthians a colony in Spain, the later Saguntum. Much
less, however, did the Latins range themselves on the side of
the Hellenes: the neutrality of their position in this respect is
attested by the close relations maintained between Caere and Rome,
as well as by the traces of ancient intercourse between the Latins
and the Carthaginians. It was through the medium of the Hellenes
that the Cannanite race became known to the Romans, for, as we have
already seen,(7) they always designated it by its Greek name; but
the fact that they did not borrow from the Greeks either the name
for the city of Carthage(8) or the national name of the -Afri-,(9)
and the circumstance that among the earlier Romans Tyrian wares were
designated by the adjective -Sarranus-,(10) which in like manner
precludes the idea of Greek intervention, demonstrate--what the
treaties of a later period concur in proving--the direct commercial
intercourse anciently subsisting between Latium and Carthage.
The combined power of the Italians and Phoenicians actually succeeded
in substantially retaining the western half of the Mediterranean
in their hands. The northwestern portion of Sicily, with the
important ports of Soluntum and Panormus on the north coast, and
Motya at the point which looks towards Africa, remained in the
direct or indirect possession of the Carthaginians. About the
age of Cyrus and Croesus, just when the wise Bias was endeavouring
to induce the Ionians to emigrate in a body from Asia Minor and
settle in Sardinia (about 200), the Carthaginian general Malchus
anticipated them, and subdued a considerable portion of that important
island by force of arms; half a century later, the whole coast of
Sardinia appears in the undisputed possession of the Carthaginian
community. Corsica on the other hand, with the towns of Alalia
and Nicaea, fell to the Etruscans, and the natives paid to these
tribute of the products of their poor island, pitch, wax, and honey.
In the Adriatic sea, moreover, the allied Etruscans and Carthaginians
ruled, as in the waters to the west of Sicily and Sardinia. The
Greeks, indeed, did not give up the struggle. Those Rhodians and
Cnidians, who had been driven out of Lilybaeum, established themselves
on the islands between Sicily and Italy and founded there the town
of Lipara (175). Massilia flourished in spite of its isolation, and
soon monopolized the trade of the region from Nice to the Pyrenees.
At the Pyrenees themselves Rhoda (now Rosas) was established as an
offset from Lipara, and it is affirmed that Zacynthians settled in
Saguntum, and even that Greek dynasts ruled at Tingis (Tangiers)
in Mauretania. But the Hellenes no longer gained ground; after
the foundation of Agrigentum they did not succeed in acquiring any
important additions of territory on the Adriatic or on the western
sea, and they remained excluded from the Spanish waters as well
as from the Atlantic Ocean. Every year the Liparaeans had their
conflicts with the Tuscan "sea-robbers," and the Carthaginians with
the Massiliots, the Cyrenaeans, and above all with the Sicilian
Greeks; but no results of permanent moment were on either side
achieved, and the issue of struggles which lasted for centuries
was, on the whole, the simple maintenance of the -status quo-.
Thus Italy was--if but indirectly--indebted to the Phoenicians for
the exemption of at least her central and northern provinces from
colonization, and for the counter-development of a national maritime
power there, especially in Etruria. But there are not wanting
indications that the Phoenicians already found it worth while
to manifest that jealousy which is usually associated with naval
domination, if not in reference to their Latin allies, at any rate
in reference to their Etruscan confederates, whose naval power was
greater. The statement as to the Carthaginians having prohibited
the sending forth of an Etruscan colony to the Canary islands, whether
true or false, reveals the existence of a rivalry of interests in
the matter.
Notes for Book I Chapter X
1. Whether the name of Graeci was originally associated with the
interior of Epirus and the region of Dodona, or pertained rather
to the Aetolians who perhaps earlier reached the western sea, may
be left an open question; it must at a remote period have belonged
to a prominent stock or aggregate of stocks of Greece proper and
have passed over from these to the nation as a whole. In the Eoai
of Hesiod it appears as the older collective name for the nation,
although it is manifest that it is intentionally thrust aside and
subordinated to that of Hellenes. The latter does not occur in
Homer, but, in addition to Hesiod, it is found in Archilochus about
the year 50, and it may very well have come into use considerably
earlier (Duncker, Gesch. d. Alt. iii. 18, 556). Already before this
period, therefore, the Italians were so widely acquainted with the
Greeks that that name, which early fell into abeyance in Hellas,
was retained by them as a collective name for the Greek nation,
even when the latter itself adopted other modes of self-designation.
It was withal only natural that foreigners should have attained to
an earlier and clearer consciousness of the fact that the Hellenic
stocks belonged to one race than the latter themselves, and that
hence the collective designation should have become more definitely
fixed among the former than with the latter--not the less, that it
was not taken directly from the well-known Hellenes who dwelt the
nearest to them. It is difficult to see how we can reconcile with
this fact the statement that a century before the foundation of
Rome Italy was still quite unknown to the Greeks of Asia Minor.
We shall speak of the alphabet below; its history yields entirely
similar results. It may perhaps be characterized as a rash step
to reject the statement of Herodotus respecting the age of Homer
on the strength of such considerations; but is there no rashness
in following implicitly the guidance of tradition in questions of
this kind?
2. Thus the three old Oriental forms of the --"id:i" (--"id:S"),
--"id:l" (--"id:/\") and --"id:r" (--"id:P"), for which as apt to
be confounded with the forms of the --"id:s", --"id:g", and --"id:p"
the signs --"id:I") --"id:L" --"id:R") were early proposed to be
substituted, remained either in exclusive or in very preponderant
use among the Achaean colonies, while the other Greeks of Italy
and Sicily without distinction of race used exclusively or at any
rate chiefly the more recent forms.
3. E. g. the inscription on an earthen vase of Cumae runs thus:----Tataies
emi lequthos Fos d' an me klephsei thuphlos estai--.
4. Among Greek writers this Tyrrhene legend of Odysseus makes its
earliest appearance in the Theogony of Hesiod, in one of its more
recent sections, and thereafter in authors of the period shortly
before Alexander, Ephorus (from whom the so-called Scymnus drew his
materials), and the writer known as Scylax. The first of these
sources belongs to an age when Italy was still regarded by the
Greeks as a group of islands, and is certainly therefore very old;
so that the origin of these legends may, on the whole, be confidently
placed in the regal period of Rome.
5. I. X. Phoenicians in Italy, I. X. Relations of the Western
Italians to the Greeks
6. I. X. Relations of Italy with Other Lands
7. I. X. Phoenicians in Italy
8. The Phoenician name was Karthada; the Greek, Karchedon; the
Roman, Cartago.
9. The name -Afri-, already current in the days of Ennius and Cato
(comp. -Scipio Africanus-), is certainly not Greek, and is most
probably cognate with that of the Hebrews.
10. The adjective -Sarranus- was from early times applied by the
Romans to the Tyrian purple and the Tyrian flute; and -Sarranus-was
in use also as a surname, at least from the time of the war with
Hannibal. -Sarra-, which occurs in Ennius and Plautus as the name
of the city, was perhaps formed from -Sarranus-, not directly from
the native name -Sor-. The Greek form, -Tyrus-, -Tyrius-, seems
not to occur in any Roman author anterior to Afranius (ap. Fest.
p. 355 M.). Compare Movers, Phon. ii. x, 174.