Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/52

 34 HISTORY OF GREECE. Apollo, and elsewhere, together with the profusion of excavated and ornamented tombs, attest sufficiently what the grandeur of the place must have been in the days of Herodotus and Pindar. So much did the Kyrenaeans pride themselves on the Silphium, found wild in their back country, from the island of Platea on the east to the inner recess of the Great Syrtis westward, the leaves of which were highly salubrious for cattle, and the stalk fur man, while the root furnished the peculiar juice for export, that they maintained it to have first appeared seven years prior to the arrival of the first Grecian colonists in their city. 1 But it was not only the properties of the soil which promoted the prosperity of Kyrene. Isokrates 2 praises the well-chosen site of that colony because it was planted in the midst of indi- genous natives apt for subjection, and far distant from any formi- dable enemies. That the native Libyan tribes were made con- ducive in an eminent degree to the growth of the Greco-Libyan cities, admits of no doubt ; and in reviewing the history of these cities, we must bear in mind that their population was not pure Greek, but more or less mixed, like that of the colonies in Italy, Sicily, or Ionia. Though our information is very imperfect, we Bee enough to prove that the small force brought over by Battus the Stammerer was enabled first to fraternize with the indigenous Libyans, next, reinforced by additional colonists and availing themselves of the power of native chiefs, to overawe and subju- gate them. Kyrene combined with Barka and Hesperides, both of them sprung from her root 3 exercised over the Libyan tribes between the borders of Egypt and the inner recess of the Great Syrtis, for a space of three degrees of longitude, an ascen- 1 Theophrast. Hist. PI. vi, 3,3; ix, 1, 7 ; Skylax, c. 107. colony of Lacedaemon, and Kyrene of Thera, Isokrates speaks of Kyrtne as a colony of Lacedoemon. 3 Pindar, Pyth. iv, 26. KvpqvTjv uariuv fti&v. In the time of Herodo- tus these three cities may possibly have been spoken of as a Tripolis ; buV no one before Alexander the Great would have understood the expression Pentapolis, used under the Romans to denote Kyrene, Apollonia, Ptole- mais, Teucheira, and Berenike, or Hesperi'"es. Ptolemais, originally the port of Barka had become autonoim us, at'J of Beater importance than the latter.
 * Isokrates, Or. v, ad Philipp. p. 84, (p. 107, ed. Bck.) Thera being a