Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/433

 COLONIZATION OF DOWEL'S. < Ifl the Italian coast with the rustic population of the interior. The Krotoniates might destroy Sybaris, and disperse its inhabitants, but they could not succeed to its wide dominion over dependent territory; and the extinction of this great aggregate pow^r, stretching across the peninsula from sea to sea, lessened the means of resistance against the Oscan movements from the inland. From this time forward, the cities of Magna Gratia, as well as those of Ionia, tend to decline in consequence, while Athens, on the other hand, becomes both more conspicuous and more powerful. At the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, thirty years after this conquest of Sybaris, Sparta and Athens send tc ask for aid both from Sicily and Korky ra, but not from Magna Graecia. It is much to be regretted that we do not possess fuller infor- mation respecting these important changes among the Greco- Italian cities, but we may remark that even Herodotus, himself a citizen of Thurii, and dwelling on the spot not more than eighty years after the capture of Sybaris, evidently found no written memorials to consult ; and could obtain from verbal conversation nothing better than statements both meagre and contradictory. The material circumstance, for example, of the aid rendered by the Spartan Dorieus and his colonists, though positively asserted by the Sybarites, was as positively denied by the Krotoniates, who aUeged that they had accomplished the conquest by themselves, and with their own unaided forces. There can be little hesitation in crediting the affirmative asser- tion of the Sybarites, who showed to Herodotus a temple and precinct erected by the Spartan prince in testimony of his share in the victory, on the banks of the dry, deserted channel, out of which the Krathis had been turned, and in honor of the Krathian Athene. 1 This of itself forms a proof, coupled with the positive assertion of the Sybarites, sufficient for the case. But they pro- duced another indirect argument to confirm it, which deserves notice. Dorieus had attacked Sybaris while he was passing along the coast of Italy to go and found a colony in Sicily, under the express mandate and encouragement of the oracle ; and after tarrying awhile at Sybaris, he pursued his journey to the south- 1 Herodot. f, 45.