Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/384

 368 IIISTORl- OF GREECE. continuing undiminished even at the present day, together with sheep, cattle, hides, wool, and timber from the native population in the interior. These natives seem to have been of rude pastoral habits, dispersed either among petty hill-villages, or in caverns hewn out of the rock, like the primitive inhabitants of the Ba- learic islands and Sardinia ; so that Sicily, like New Zealand in our century, was now for the first time approached by organized industry and tillage. 1 Their progress, though very great, during this most prosperous interval (between the foundation of Naxos, in 735 B. c. to the reign of Gelon at Syracuse in 485 B. c.), is not to be compared to that of the English colonies in America ; but it was nevertheless very great, and appears greater from being con- centrated as it was in and around a few cities. Individual spread- ing and separation of residence were rare, nor did they consist either with the security or the social feelings of a Grecian colon- ist. The city to which he belonged was the central point of his existence, where the produce which he raised was brought home to be stored or sold, and where alone his active life, political, do- mestic, religious, recreative, etc., was carried on. There were dispersed throughout the territory of the city suuill fortified places and garrisons, 2 serving as temporary protection to the cultivators in case of sudden inroad ; but there was no permanent resi- dence for the free citizen except the town itself. This was, per haps, even more the case in a colonial settlement, where every- thing began and spread from one central point, than in Attica, where the separate villages had once nourished a population 1 Of these Sikcl or Sikan caverns many traces yet remain : see Otto Siefert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, pp. 39, 45, 49, 55, and the work of Captain W. H. Smyth, Sicily and its Islands, London, 1824, p. 190. " These cryptse (observes the latter) appear to have been the earliest effort of a primitive and pastoral people towards a town, and are generally with- out regularity as to shape and magnitude : in after-ages they perhaps served as a retreat in time of danger, and as a place of security in case of extraor- dinary alarm, for women, children, and valuables. In this light, I was particularly struck with the resemblance these rude habitations bore to tin raves I had seen in Owhyhce, for similar uses. The Troglodyte villages o. Northern Africa, of which I saw several, are also precisely the sair.c" About the earl) cave-residences in Sardinia and the Balearic islands, con nU Diodor. v, 15-17. 2 Thucydid. vi, 45. r TepiiroTua TU EV ry %wpp (of Syracuse).