Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/377

 COLONIES IN SICILY. -NAXOS. 361 traordinary 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 Kyrene), the narrow range of Gre- cian navigation ; so that the previous supposed ignorance would not be at all incredible, were it not for the fact of the preexisting colony of Cumse. According to the practice universal with Gre- cian 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 lapygian promontory, from whence he proceeded along the east- ern 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 Cuma3, 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 iion-IIellenic, with the single exception of the remote Cuma?. A little before the last-mentioned period, Theokles (an Athenian or a Chalkidian probably the latter) was cast by storms on the coast of Sicily, and became acquainted with the tempting char- acter of the soil, as well as the dispersed and half-organized con- dition of the petty Sikel communities who occupied it. 1 The oligarchy of Chalkis, acting upon the information which he brought back, sent out under his guidance settlers, 2 Chalkidian and Naxian, who founded the Sicilian Naxos. Theokles and his companions on landing first occupied the eminence of Taurus, im- 1 Thucyd. vi, 3 ; Strabo, vi, p. 267. 2 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, Xa/Uz'f- Ephorus put together into one the Chalkidian and the Megarian migra- tions, which Thucydides represents as distinct (Ephorus ap. Strabo, vi, p 267). VOL. 111. 16