Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/309

 MASSILIA. liis time speaks of the power being in the hanJs of the " selecti et principos," or as he calls them in another place the "optimates;" and though the administration was equitable, " there was," he says, " in this condition of the ' pofiulus' a certain resem- blance to servitude." Thi;ugh the people had little or no power, so far as we can learn, yet the name Demus was in use ; and probably, as in most Greek towns, the official title was Boule and Demus, as at Korne it was Senatas Populasque Romanus. The division of the people was into Phylae. The council of the 600 jirobably subsisted to a late period, for Lucian, or wlioever is the author of the Tuxaris (c. 24) mentions it in his story of the friendship of Zenothemis and Menecrates. Some writers have attempted, out of the fragments of antiquity, to reconstruct the whole poUty of Jlas- salia ; an idle and foolish attempt. A few things are recorded, which are worth notice; and though the authority for some of them is not a critical writer, we can hardly suppose that he invented. (Valer. Maxim, ii. 6.) I'uison was kept under the care of the administration, and if a man wished to die, he must apply to the Six Hundred, and if he made out a gwjd case, he was allowed to take a dose; and " herein," says Valerius, " a manly investiga- tion was tempered by kindness, which neither al- lowed any one to depart from life without a cause, and wisely gives to him who wishes to depart a speedy way to death." The credibility of this usage has been doubted on various grounds; but there is nothing in it contrary to the notions of antiquity. Two coffins always stood at the gates, one f(jr the liie slave, one for the freeman ; the bodies were taken to the place of interment or burning, which- ever it w-as, in a vehicle : the sorrow terminated on the day of the funeral, which was followed by a domestic sacrifice and a repast of the relations. The tiling was done cheap: the undertaker would not grow rich at Massalia. No stranger was allowed to enter the city with arms : they were taken from hirn, and restored when he went away. These and other precautions had their origin in the insecurity of settlers among a warlike and hostile population of Ligurians and Galh. The Jlatsaliots also had slaves, as all Greeks had; and thouj^h manumission was permitted, it may be inferred from Valerius, if lie has not after his fashion confounded a Greek and Koman usage, that the slave's condition was hard. A supply of slaves might be got from the Galli, who sold their own children. Whether the Ligurian was so base, may be doubted. We read of Ligurians working for daily hire for Massaliot masters. This hardy race, men and women, used to come down from the mountains to earn a scanty pittance by tilling the ground ; and two ancient writers have presei-ved the same story, on the evidence of Posi- donius, of the endurance of a Ligurian woman, who was working for a Massaliot farmer, and being seized with the pains of childbirth, retired into a wood to be ilehvered, and caineback to her work, for she would not lose her hire. (Strab. iii. p. IG.'J ; Diodor. iv. 20.) It is just to add that the employer paid the poor woman her wages, and sent her off with the child. The temperance, decency, and simjilicity of Mas- saliot manners during their best period, before they had long been subjected to Poman rule, are com- mended by the ancient writers. 'I'he women drank no wine. Those spectacles, which the Ptonians called Minii, coarse, corrupting exhibitions, were pro- hibited. Against religious impo.itors the Massa- MASSILIA. 293 Hot shut his door, for in those days there were men who made a trade of superstition. The highest sum of money that a man could get with a woman was a hundred gold pieces: he must take a wife for what she was worth, and not for her money. She had five gold pieces for her dress, and five for her gold ornaments. This was the limit fixed by the sumptuary laws. Perhaps the Massaliot women were handsome enough to want iwthing more. Massalia cultivated literature, though it did not produce, as far as we know, either poets or histo- rians. An edition (5i(5p9&;(Tis) of the Homeric poems, called the JIassaliot edition, was used by the Alexandrine critics in settling the text of Homer. It is not known by whom this ediion was made ; but as it bore the name of Massalia, it may be supposed that it came from this city. The name of Pythoas is inseparably connected with the mari- time fame of Massalia, but opinions will always differ, as they did in antiquity, as to the extent of his voyages and his veracity. (Strab. ii. p. 104.) That this man, a contemporary of Alexander, navi- gated the Atlantic Ocean, saw Britain, and explored a large part of the western coast of Europe, can hardly be doubted. There was nothing strange in this, for the Phoenicians had been in Britain cen- turies before. Pliny (ii. 97) records a statement of Pytheas as to the high tides on the British coast. Strabo (ii. p. 71) stales that Hipparchus, on the authority of Pytheas, placed Massalia and Byzantium in the same latitude. But it appears from another passage of Strabo (ii. p. 115), that Hipparchus said that the ratio between the gnomon and its shadow at Byzantium was the same that Pytheas said it was at Massalia; whence it appears that the conclusion is Hipparchus' own, and that the error may have been either in the latitude of JLassalia, or in the latitude of Byzantium. As for the voyages of another Massaliot, Euthymenes, there is too little authority to enable us to say anything certain. As the Massaliots planted their colonies along the south coast of Gallia and even in Spain, we may conclude that all the places which they chose were .-^elected with a view to commerce. The territory which Massalia itself had, and its colonies, was in- significant. Montesquieu (^Esprit des Lois, xx. .5) justly estimated the consequences of this city's po- sition : " Marseille, a necessaiy port of refuge in the midst of a stormy sea ; Marseille, this place where the winds, the sea-banks, the form of the coast, bid the mariner touch, was frequented by maritime peoples. The sterility of its soil determined com- merce as the pursuit of the inhabitants." The Massaliots were noted for their excellent ships and then: skill in constructing machinery. They carried on a large trade by sea, and we may conclude that they exported the products of Gallia, for which they could give either foreign produce or their own wine, oil, domestic utensils, and arms. The fact that in Caesar's time the Helvetii used the Greek cha- racters, is in itself evidence of the intercourse be- tween the Greeks oii the coast and the Galli. When we consider also that the Greeks were settled all along the southern coast of Gallia, from which the access was easy to the basin of the Garonne, it is a fair conclusion that they exchanged articles, either directly or through several hands, with the Galli on the Western Ocean ; and so part of the trade of Britannia would pass through the Greek settlements on the south coast of France. [Gallia, Vol. I. p. 963.] V 3