Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/433

 TERRITORY OF EPIRITS. 41 / it is to them that we are to ascribe the formation of towns like PhoenikO, an inland city a few miles removed from the sea, in a latitude somewhat north of the northernmost point of Korkyra, which Polybius notices as the most flourishing 1 of the Epirotie cities at the time when it was plundered by the Illyrians in 23G B. c. Passaron, the ancient spot where the Molossian kings were accustomed on their accession to take their coronation-oath, had grown into a considerable town, in this last century before the Roman conquest ; while Tekmon, Phylake, and Horreum also became known to us at the same period. 2 But the most impor- tant step which those kings made towards aggrandizement, was the acquisition of the Greek city of Ambrakia, which became the capital of the kingdom of Pyrrhus, and thus gave to him the only site suitable for a concentrated population which the country afforded. If we follow the coast of Epirus from the entrance of the Am- brakian gulf northward to the Akrokeraunian promontory, we shall find it discouraging to Grecian colonization. There are none of those extensive maritime plains which the gulf of Taren- tum exhibits on its coast, and which sustained the grandeur of Sybaris and Kroton. Throughout the whole extent, the moun- tain-region, abrupt and affording little cultivable soil, approaches near to the sea, 3 and the level ground, wherever it exists, must be commanded and possessed, as it is now, by villagers on hill-sites, always difficult of attack and often inexpugnable. From hence, and from the neighborhood of Korkyra, herself well situated for traffic with Epirus, and jealous of neighboring rivals, we may understand why the Grecian emigrants omitted this unprofit- able tract, and passed on either northward to the maritime plains of Illyria, or westward to Italy. In the time of Herodotus and Thucydides, there seems to have been no Hellenic settlement between Ambrakia and Apollonia. The harbor called Glykys Limen, and the neighboring valley and plain, the most consider- able in Epirus, next to that of Ambrakia, near the junction of 1 Polybius, ii, 5, 8. ' Plutarch, Pyrrh. c. i ; Livy, xlv, 26. ' See the description of the geographical features of Epims in Bone, La Tarquie en Europe, Ge'ographie Ge'nerale, vol. i, p. 57. YOL. in. 18* 27oc.