Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/383

 AGIUGEXTUM. - SELIXUS. - IIIMEK A. 367 on the westerly portion of the northern coast, the single Hellenic establishment in the time of Thucydides which that long line of coast presented. The inhabitants of the Hyblaeau Me- ga ra were founders of Selinus, about G30 B. c., a century after their own establishment : the oekist Pamillus, according to the usual Hellenic practice, was invited from their metropolis Me- gara in Greece proper, but we are not told how many fresh set- tlers came with him : the language of Thucydides leads us to suppose that the new town was peopled chiefly from the Hybloean Megarians themselves. The town of Akraga?, or Agrigentum, called after the neighboring river of the former name, was found- ed from Gela in B. c. 582. Its ockists were Aristonous and Pys- tilus, and it received the statutes and religious characteristics of Gela. Himera, on the other hand, was founded from Zankle, under three cekists, Eukleides, Simus, and Sakon. 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 Myletido?, who had been expelled from home by a sedition, so that the Himeroean dialect was a mixture of Doric and Chalkidic. Himera was situated not far from the towns of the Elymi, Eyrx and Egesta. 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 Thucydides, - but they are unfortunately too few to afford the least satisfac- tion 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 calam- ities 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 Gelon. 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