Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/47

 KYRENE AND BARKA.-HESPEEIDES. CHAPTER XXVII. KYRENE AND BAEKA.-HESPEKIDES. IT has been already mentioned, in a former chapter, thai Psammetichus king of Egypt, about the middle of the seventh century B.C., first removed those prohibitions which had excluded Grecian commerce from his country. In his reign, Grecian mer- cenaries were first established in Egypt, and Grecian traders ad- mitted, under certain regulations, into the Nile. The opening of this new market emboldened them to traverse the direct sea which separates Krete from Egypt, a dangerous voyage with vessels which rarely ventured to lose sight of land, and seems to have first made them acquainted with the neighboring coast of Libya, between the Nile and the gulf called the Great Syrtis. Hence arose the foundation of the important colony called Kyrene. As in the case of most other Grecian colonies, so in that of Kyrene, both the foundation and the early history are very im- perfectly known. The date of the event, as far as can be made out amidst much contradiction of statement, was about G30 B.C. : l Thera was the mother-city, herself a colony from Lacedjemon ; and the settlements formed in Libya became no inconsiderable ornaments to the Dorian name in Hellas. According to the account of a lost historian, Menekles, 2 political dissension among the inhabitants of Thera led to that emigration which founded Kyrene ; and the more ample legend- ary details which Herodotus collected, partly from Theraean, partly from Kyrensean informants, are not positively inconsistent with this statement, though they indicate more particularly bad seasons, distress, and over-population. Both of them dwell em phalically on the Delphian oracle as the instigator as well as tb 1 See the discussion of the era of Kyrene in Thrive. Historia chs. 22, 23, 24, where the different statements are noticed and compared.
 * Schol. ad Pindar. Pyth. iv.