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).
At the time when Theoklês landed on the hill near Naxos, and
Archias in the islet of Ortygia, and when each of them expelled
the Sikels from that particular spot, there were Sikel villages
or little communities spread through all the neighboring country.
By the gradual encroachments of the colony, some of these might
be dispossessed and driven out of the plains near the coast into
the more mountainous regions of the interior, but many of them
doubtless found it convenient to submit, to surrender a portion of
their lands, and to hold the rest as subordinate villagers of an
Hellenic city-community:[697] and we find even at the time of the
Athenian invasion (414 B. C.) villages existing in distinct identity
as Sikels, yet subject and tributary to Syracuse. Moreover, the
influence which the Greeks exercised, though in the first instance
essentially compulsory, became also in part self-operating,—the
ascendency of a higher over a lower civilization. It was the
working of concentrated townsmen, safe among one another by their
walls and by mutual confidence, and surrounded by more or less of
ornament, public as well as private,—upon dispersed, unprotected,
artless villagers, who could not be insensible to the charm of that
superior intellect, imagination, and organization, which wrought
so powerfully upon the whole contemporaneous world. To understand
the action of these superior emigrants upon the native but inferior
Sikels, during those three earliest centuries (730-430 B. C.) which
followed the arrival of Archias and Theoklês, we have only to study
the continuance of the same action during the three succeeding
centuries which preceded the age of Cicero. At the period when
Athens undertook the siege of Syracuse (B. C. 415), the interior of
the island was occupied by Sikel and Sikan communities, autonomous,
and retaining their native customs and language;[698] but in the
time of Verres and Cicero (three centuries and a half afterwards)
the interior of the island, as well as the maritime regions had
become Hellenized: the towns in the interior were then hardly less
Greek than those on the coast. Cicero contrasts favorably the
character of the Sicilians with that of the Greeks generally (_i.
e._ the Greeks out of Sicily), but he nowhere distinguishes Greeks
in Sicily from native Sikels;[699] nor Enna and Centuripi from
Katana and Agrigentum. The little Sikel villages became gradually
semi-Hellenized and merged into subjects of a Grecian town during
the first three centuries, this change took place in the regions
of the coast,—during the following three centuries, in the regions
of the interior; and probably with greater rapidity and effect in
the earlier period, not only because the action of the Grecian
communities was then closer, more concentrated, and more compulsory,
but because also the obstinate tribes could then retire into the
interior.
[697] Thucyd. vi, 88.
[698] Thucyd. vi, 62-87; vii, 13.
[699] Cicero in Verrem, Act. ii, lib. iv, c. 26-51; Diodor. v. 6.
Contrast the manner in which Cicero speaks of Agyrium, Centuripi,
and Enna, with the description of these places as inhabited by
autonomous Sikels, B. C. 396, in the wars of the elder Dionysius
(Diodor. xiv, 55, 58, 78). Both Sikans and Sikels were at that
time completely distinguished from the Greeks, in the centre of
the island.
O. Müller states that “Syracuse, seventy years after its
foundation, colonized Akræ, also Enna, situated in the centre
of the island,” (Hist. of Dorians, i, 6, 7). Enna is mentioned
by Stephanus Byz. as a Syracusan foundation, but without notice
of the date of its foundation, which must have been much later
than Müller here affirms. Serra di Falco (Antichità di Sicilia,
Introd. t. i, p. 9) gives Enna as having been founded later
than Akræ, but earlier than Kasmenæ: for which date I find no
authority. Talaria (see Steph. Byz. _ad voc._) is also mentioned
as another Syracusan city, of which we do not know either the
date or the particulars of foundation.
The Greeks in Sicily are thus not to be considered as purely Greeks,
but as modified by a mixture of Sikel and Sikan language, customs,
and character. Each town included in its non-privileged population
a number of semi-Hellenized Sikels (or Sikans, as the case might
be), who, though in a state of dependence, contributed to mix the
breed and influence the entire mass. We have no reason to suppose
that the Sikel or Œnotrian language ever became written, like Latin,
Oscan, or Umbrian:[700] the inscriptions of Segesta and Halesus
are all in Doric Greek, which supplanted the native tongue for
public purposes as a separate language, but not without becoming
itself modified in the confluence. In following the ever-renewed
succession of violent political changes, the inferior capacity of
regulated and pacific popular government, and the more unrestrained
and voluptuous license, which the Sicilian and Italian Greeks[701]
exhibit as compared with Athens and the cities of Greece proper,—we
must call to mind that we are not dealing with pure Hellenism; and
that the native element, though not unfavorable to activity or
increase of wealth, prevented the Grecian colonist from partaking
fully in that improved organization which we so distinctly trace
in Athens from Solon downwards. How much the taste, habits, ideas,
religion, and local mythes, of the native Sikels passed into the
minds of the Sikeliots or Sicilian Greeks, is shown by the character
of their literature and poetry. Sicily was the native country of
that rustic mirth and village buffoonery which gave birth to the
primitive comedy,—politicized and altered at Athens so as to suit
men of the market-place, the ekklesia, and the dikastery,—blending,
in the comedies of the Syracusan Epicharmus, copious details about
the indulgences of the table (for which the ancient Sicilians were
renowned) with Pythagorean philosophy and moral maxims,—but given
with all the naked simplicity of common life, in a sort of rhythmical
prose, without even the restraint of a fixed metre, by the Syracusan
Sophrôn in his lost Mimes, and afterwards polished as well as
idealized in the Bucolic poetry of Theokritus.[702] That which is
commonly termed the Doric comedy was in great part at least, the
Sikel comedy taken up by Dorian composers,—the Doric race and dialect
being decidedly predominant in Sicily: the manners thus dramatized
belonged to that coarser vein of humor which the Doric Greeks of
the town had in common with the semi-Hellenized Sikels of the
circumjacent villages. Moreover, it seems probable that this rustic
population enabled the despots of the Greco-Sicilian towns to form
easily and cheaply those bodies of mercenary troops, by whom their
power was sustained,[703] and whose presence rendered the continuance
of popular government, even supposing it begun, all but impossible.
[700] Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, sect. 1, p. 3.
[701] Plato, Epistol. vii, p. 326; Plautus, Rudens, Act i, Sc. 1,
56; Act ii. Sc. 6, 58.
[702] Timokreon, Fragment. 5 ap. Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, p.
478,—Σικελὸς κομψὸς ἀνὴρ Ποτὶ τὰν ματέρ᾽ ἔφα.
Bernhardy, Grundriss der Geschichte der Griech. Litteratur, vol.
ii, ch. 120, sects. 2-5; Grysar, De Doriensium Comœdia, Cologne,
1828, ch. i, pp. 41, 55, 57, 210; Boeckh, De Græcæ Tragœd.
Princip. p. 52; Aristot. ap. Athenæ. xi, 505. The κότταβος seems
to have been a native Sikel fashion, borrowed by the Greeks
(Athenæus, xv, pp. 666-668).
The Sicilian βουκολιασμὸς was a fashion among the Sicilian
herdsmen earlier than Epicharmus, who noticed the alleged
inventor of it, Diomus, the βούκολος Σικελιώτης (Athenæ. xiv, p.
619). The rustic manners and speech represented in the Sicilian
comedy are contrasted with the town manners and speech of the
Attic comedy, by Plautus, Persæ. Act. iii. Sc. 1, v, 31:—
“Librorum eccillum habeo plenum soracum.
Dabuntur dotis tibi inde sexcenti logi,
Atque Attici omnes, nullum Siculum acceperis.”
Compare the beginning of the prologue to the Menæchmi of Plautus.
The comic μῦθος began at Syracuse with Epicharmus and Phormis
(Aristot. Poet, v, 5).
[703] Zenobius, Proverb. v, 84.—Σικελὸς στρατιώτης.
It was the destiny of most of the Grecian colonial establishments
to perish by the growth and aggression of those inland powers upon
whose coast they were planted,—powers which gradually acquired, from
the vicinity of the Greeks, a military and political organization,
and a power of concentrated action, such as they had not originally
possessed. But in Sicily, the Sikels were not numerous enough even
to maintain permanently their own nationality, and were ultimately
penetrated on all sides by Hellenic ascendency and manners. We shall,
nevertheless, come to one remarkable attempt, made by a native Sikel
prince in the 82d Olympiad (455 B. C.),—the enterprising Duketius,—to
group many petty Sikel villages into one considerable town, and
thus to raise his countrymen into the Grecian stage of polity and
organization. Had there been any Sikel prince endowed with these
superior ideas at the time when the Greeks first settled in Sicily,
the subsequent history of the island would probably have been very
different; but Duketius had derived his projects from the spectacle
of the Grecian towns around him, and these latter had acquired much
too great power to permit him to succeed. The description of his
abortive attempt, however, which we find in Diodorus,[704] meagre as
it is, forms an interesting point in the history of the island.
[704] Diodor. xi, 90-91; xii, 9.
Grecian colonization in Italy began nearly at the same time as in
Sicily, and was marked by the same general circumstances. Placing
ourselves at Rhegium (now Reggio) on the Sicilian strait, we trace
Greek cities gradually planted on various points of the coast as far
as Cumæ on the one sea, and Tarentum (Taranto) on the other. Between
the two seas runs the lofty chain of the Apennines, calcareous in
the upper part of its course, throughout middle Italy,—granitic and
schistose in the lower part, where it traverses the territories now
called the hither and the farther Calabria. The plains and valleys
on each side of the Calabrian Apennines exhibit a luxuriance of
vegetation extolled by all observers, and surpassing even that of
Sicily;[705] and great as the productive powers of this territory
are now, there is full reason for believing that they must have
been far greater in ancient times. For it has been visited by
repeated earthquakes, each of which has left calamitous marks of
devastation: those of 1638 and 1783—especially the latter, whose
destructive effects were on a terrific scale, both as to life and
property[706]—are of a date sufficiently recent to admit of recording
and measuring the damage done by each; and that damage, in many parts
of the south-western coast, was great and irreparable. Animated as
the epithets are, therefore, with which the modern traveller paints
the present fertility of Calabria, we are warranted in enlarging
their meaning when we conceive the country as it stood between
720-320 B. C., the period of Grecian occupation and independence;
while the unhealthy air, which now desolates the plains generally,
seems then to have been felt only to a limited extent, and over
particular localities. The founders of Tarentum, Sybaris, Krotôn,
Lokri, and Rhegium, planted themselves in situations of unexampled
promise to the industrious cultivator, which the previous inhabitants
had turned to little account: since the subjugation of the Grecian
cities, these once rich possessions have sunk into poverty and
depopulation, especially during the last three centuries, from
insalubrity, indolence, bad administration, and fear of the Barbary
corsairs.
[705] See Dolomieu, Dissertation on the Earthquakes of Calabria
Ultra, in 1783, in Pinkerton, Collection of Voyages and Travels,
vol. v, p. 280.
“It is impossible (he observes) to form an adequate idea of the
fertility of Calabria Ultra, particularly of that part called
the Plain (south-west of the Apennines, below the gulf of St.
Eufemia). The fields, productive of olive-trees of larger growth
than any seen elsewhere, are yet productive of grain. Vines
load with their branches the trees on which they grow, yet
lessen not their crops. All things grow there, and nature seems
to anticipate the wishes of the husbandman. There is never a
sufficiency of hands to gather the whole of the olives, which
finally fall and rot at the bottom of the trees that bore them,
in the months of February and March. Crowds of foreigners,
principally Sicilians, come there to help to gather them, and
share the produce with the grower. Oil is their chief article of
exportation: in every quarter their wines are good and precious.”
Compare pp. 278-282.
[706] Mr. Keppel Craven observes (Tour through the Southern
Provinces of Naples, ch. xiii, p. 254), “The earthquake of 1783
may be said to have altered the face of the whole of Calabria
Ultra, and extended its ravages as far northward as Cosenza.”