Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/158

138 there; and the new settlers, when located amidst barbarians, recognized their common character and common interests as civilized Europeans, more strongly than they had done in their former home. So it was with the new discovery of the Greeks. The privilege of navigating the western waters and settling on the western land was not the exclusive property of a single Grecian province or of a single Grecian stock, but a common good for the whole Hellenic nation; and, just as in the formation of the new North American world, English and French, Dutch and German settlements became mingled and blended, Grecian Sicily and "Great Greece" became peopled by a mixture of all sorts of Hellenic races often amalgamated so as no longer to be distinguishable. Leaving out of account some settlements occupying a more isolated position such as that of the Locrians, with its offsets, Hipponium and Medama, and the settlement of the Phocæans, which was not founded till towards the close of this period, Hyele (Velia, Elea), we may distinguish in a general view three leading groups. The original Ionian group, comprehended under the name of the Chalcidian towns, included in Italy Cumæ with the other Greek settlements near Vesuvius and Rhegium, and in Sicily Zankle (afterwards Messana), Naxos, Catana, Leontini, and Himera. The Achæan group embraced Sybaris and the greater part of the cities of Magna Græcia. The Dorian comprehended Syracuse, Gela, Agrigentum, and the majority of the Sicilian colonies, while in Italy nothing belonged to it but Taras (Tarentum) and its offset Heraclea. Upon the whoic the preponderance lay with the immigrants who belonged to the more ancient Hellenic influx, that of the Ionians and the stocks settled in the Peloponnesus before the Doric immigration. Among the Dorians only communities of a mixed population, such as Corinth and Megara, took any leading part; the purely Doric provinces had but a subordinate share in the movement. This result was naturally to be expected, for the Ionians were from ancient times a trading and seafaring people, while it was only at a comparatively late period that the Dorian stocks descended from their inland mountains to the seaboard, and they always kept aloof from maritime commerce. The different groups of immigrants are very clearly distinguished by the diversity of their monetary standards. The Phocæan settlers coined according to the Babylonian standard which prevailed in Asia. The Chalcidian towns followed in the