Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/44

 JfJ HISTORY OF GREECE. tified posts, or small towns: probably, these occupations art! of very ancient date, since they seem almost indispensable as a means of support to the islands. For the barren Tliasus, espe- cially, merits even at this day the uninviting description applied to it by the poet Archilochus, in the seventh century B.C., "an ass's backbone, overspread with wild wood :"' so wholly is it com- posed of mountain, naked or wooded, and so scanty are the patches of cultivable soil left in it, nearly all close to the sea- shore. This island was originally occupied by the Phenician?, who worked the gold mines in its mountains with a degree of in- dustry which, even in its remains, excited the admiration of Her- odotus. How and when it was evacuated by them, we do not know ; but the poet Archilochus' 2 formed one of a body of Parian colonists who planted themselves on it in the seventh century B.C., and carried on war, not always successful, against the Thracian tribe called Saians : on one occasion, Archilochus found himself compelled to throw away his shield. By their mines and their possessions on the mainland (which contained even richer mines, at Skapte Hyle, and elsewhere, than those in the island), the Thasian Greeks rose to considerable power and population. And as they seem to have been the only Greeks, until the settlement of the Milesian Histiaeus on the Strymon about 510 B.C., who actively concerned themselves in the mining districts of Thrace opposite to their island, we cannot be sur- rj&e <y war' ovov ti/.J7f uypiaf Archiloch. Fragm. 17-18, ed. Schncidewin. The striking propriety of this description, even after the lapse of two thousand five hundred years, may be seen in the Travels of Grisebach, vol. i, ch. 7, pp. 210-218, and in Prokesch, Denkwiirdigkeiten des Orients, Th. 3, p. 612. The view of Thasus from the sea justifies the title 'Hep'tr/ (CEno- maus ap. Euseb. Praepar. Evang. vii, p. 256 ; Steph. Byz. Quaaoc ). Thasus (now Tasso) contains at present a population of about six thou- sand Greeks, dispersed in twelve small villages ; it exports some good ship- timber, principally fir, of which there is abundance on the island, together with some olive oil and wax ; but it cannot grow corn enough even for this email population. No mines either are now, or have been for a long time, in work. Scholia; Strabo, x, p. 487, xii, p. 549; Thu2yd. iv. '04.
 * Archiloch. Fragm. 5, ed. Schncidewin; Aristophan. Pao. 12 Q 8, with the