Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/391

 PRODUCTIVE TERRITORY OF (ENOTIIIA. 375 the productive powers of this territory are now, there is full reason for believing that they must have been far greater in ancient times. For it has been visited by repeated earthquakes, each of which has left calamitous marks of devastation : those of 1638 and 1783 especially the latter, whose destructive effects were on a terrific scale, both as to life and property 1 are of a date sufficiently recent to admit of recording and measuring the damage done by each ; and that damage, in many parts of the south-western coast, was great and irreparable. An- imated as the epithets are, therefore, with which the modern traveller paints the present fertility of Calabria, we are war- ranted in enlarging their meaning when we conceive the country as it stood between 720-320 B. c., the period of Grecian occupa- tion and independence ; while the unhealthy air, v Inch now desolates the plains generally, seems then to have been felt only to a limited extent, and over particular localities. The founders of Tarentum, Sybaris, Kroton, Lokri, and Rhegium, planted themselves in situations of unexampled promise to the industrious cultivator, which the previous inhabitants had turned to little account : since the subjugation of the Grecian cities, these once rich possessions have sunk into poverty and depopulation, especially during the last three centuries, from insalubrity, indo- lence, bad administration, and fear of the Barbary corsairs. The CEnotrians, Sikels, or Italians, who were in possession of these territories in 720 B. c.. seem to have been rude petty com- munities, procuring for themselves safety by residence on lofty eminences, more pastoral than agricultural, and some of them consuming the produce of their fields in common mess, on a prin- ciple analogous to the syssitia of Sparta or Krete. King Ita- lus was said to have introduced this peculiarity 2 among the southernmost portion of the CEnotrian population, and at the same time to have bestowed upon them the name of Italians, though they were also known by the name of Sikels. Through- 1 Mr Kcppcl Craven observes (Tour through the Southern Provinces of Naples, ch xiii, p. 254), " The earthquake of 1783 may be said to have altered the face of tnc whole of Calabria Ultra, and extended its ravages aa l&r northward as Cosenza."
 * Aristot. Polit vii, 9. 3.