Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/45

 THE ARYAN MIGRATIONS 33 where they were satisfied to establish themselves permanently. Now, in the seventh century, the Hellenes had already taken possession of the whole of the Greek Peninsula and all the islands in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, and most of the coast of Asia Minor. They could not go conquering inland in Asia Minor ; partly because they did not wish to move away from the sea, and partly because no state could muster an army big enough to go conquering on its own account. Still a great many of the cities began to feel themselves overcrowded ; and so began an era of colonisation, when one city after another sent out great expeditions to establish cities wherever they could, across the sea. In this way a number of Greek cities were founded in Sicily and on the south coast of Italy, and even as far away as the south coast of what is now France, Distribution at Massilia, which has very nearly kept its name to of the this day in the form of Marseilles. In these regions HeUenes - they had no organised governments opposed to them to prevent their settlement; though in Sicily they presently found them- selves opposed to the rivalry of the great Phoenician colony at Carthage on the north coast of Africa facing Sicily, which had become an independent state, and was sending its ships and its colonists to regions more remote than were reached even by the Greek seamen. Now, if we look at a map of the Balkan and Greek Peninsula, the whole of the southern part was now occupied by people who recognised each other as Hellenes, who were all living in city- states such as have been described. Next to the northward come the regions of Macedonia and Epirus, which were as a matter of fact Hellenic, but were comparatively uncivilised, and were not recognised by their southern kinsmen. Then between the Adriatic and Black Seas, south of the river Danube or Ister, come Illyria on the west and Thrace on the east. The peoples here were Aryan j the Illyrians probably of the common stock which had divided into Hellenes and Italians. The Thracians may either have been of the same stock, or have belonged to the Slavonic group j but they never took their place as a civilised people. Through Thrace there poured into Asia during the seventh c