Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/376

 360 HISTORY OF GREECE. The despotism of Arbtodemus falls during the exile of the) expelled Tarquin 1 (to whom he gave shelter) from Rome, and during the government of Gelon at Syracuse ; and this calamit- ous period of dissension and misrule was one of the great causes of the decline of Cunue. 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. 2 There was thus created at the ex- pense of Cumfe a powerful city, which was still farther aggran- dized afterwards when conquered and occupied by the Samnites ; whose invading tribes, under their own name or that of Lucani- ans, extended themselves during the fifth and fourth centuries B. c., even to the shores of the gulf of Tarentum. 3 Cunue 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 in- terposition of Iliero, despot of Syracuse ; by whose naval force the invaders were repelled with slaughter. 4 These incidents go partly to indicate, partly to explain, the decline of the most an- cient Hellenic settlement in Italy, a decline from which it never recovered. After briefly sketching the history of Curare, 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, ihe Achasans in Peloponnesus, and the Lokrians out of Peloponnesus, were all concerned. Chalkis, the metropolis of Cumoe, 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 JEtna. The great number of Grecian settlements, from different colo- nizing towns, which appear to have taken effect within a few years upon the eastern coast of Italy and Sicily from the lapy- gian cape to cape PachynuvS leads us to suppose that the ex- 1 Livy, n, 21. 2 Vcllciiis Patercul. i, 5. 3 Compare Strnbo. v, p. 250 ; vi, p. 264. Cumanos Osca matavit vicinia,' Mys Vellcius, /. c. 4 Dkxlor. xi, 51 ; Pindar, Pytli. i, 71.