Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/46

 28 HISTORY OF GREECE. attained any consideration : the principal traffic of Greek shit 9 in that sea tended to more northerly ports, on the banks of the Borysthenes and in the Tauric Chersonese. Istria was founded by the Milesians near the southern embouchure of the Danube. Apollonia and Odessus on the same coast, more to the south, all probably between 600-560 B. c. The Megarian or Byzan- tine colony of Mesambria, seems to have been later than the Ionic revolt ; of Kallatis the age is not known. Torni, north of Kallatis and south of Istria, is renowned as the place of Ovid's banishment. 1 The picture which he gives of that uninviting spot, which enjoyed but little truce from the neighborhood of the murderous Getse, explains to us sufficiently why these towns acquired little or no importance. The islands of Lemnos and Imbros, in the ./Egean, were at this early period occupied by Tyrrhenian Pelasgi, were con- quered by the Persians about 508 B.C., and seem to have passed into the power of the Athenians at the time when Ionia revolted from the Persians. If the mythical or poetical stories respecting these Tyrrhenian Pelasgi contain any basis of truth, they must nave been a race of buccaneers not less rapacious than cruel. At one time, these Pelasgi seem also to have possessed Sarao- thrace, but how or when they were supplanted by Greeks, we find no trustworthy account ; the population of Samothrace at the time of the Persian war was Ionic. 2 1 Skymnus Chius, 720-740; Herodot. ii, 33, vi, 33; Strabo, vii, p. 319; Skylax, c. 68 ; Manner!, Geograph. Gr. Rom. vol. vii, ch. 8, pp. 126-140. An inscription in Boeckh's Collection proves the existence of a pentapo- lis, or union, of five Grecian cities on this coast. Tomi, Kallatis, Mesam- bria, and Apollonia, are presumed by Blaramberg to have belonged to this union. Sec Inscript. No. 2056 c. Syncellus, however (p. 213), places the foundation of Istria xmsiderab'v earlier, in 651 B.C. Herodot. viii, 90.