Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/159

Rh earliest times the Æginetan, in other words, that which originally prevailed throughout all European Greece, and especially that modification of it which is found occurring in Eubœa. The Achæan communities coined by the Corinthian standard; and lastly the Doric, upon the basis of that which Solon introduced in Attica in the year of Rome, with the exception of Tarentum and Heraclea which in their principal pieces followed rather the standard of their Achæan neighbours than that of the Dorians in Sicily.

The dates of the earlier voyages and settlements will probably always remain shrouded in total darkness. We may still, however, distinctly recognize a certain order of sequence. In the oldest Greek document, which belongs, like the earliest intercourse with the West, to the Ionians of Asia Minor, the Homeric poems, the horizon scarcely extends beyond the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Sailors driven by storms into the western sea might have brought to Asia Minor accounts of the existence of a western land, and possibly, also, of its whirlpools and island-mountains vomiting fire; but in the age of the Homeric poetry there was an utter want of reliable information respecting Sicily and Italy even in that Greek land which was the earliest to enter into intercourse with the West; and the story-tellers and poets of the East could without fear of contradiction fill the vacant realms of the West, as those of the West in their time filled the fabulous East, with their castles in the air. In the poems of Hesiod the outlines of Italy and Sicily appear better defined; there is some acquaintance with the native names of tribes, mountains, and cities in both countries; but Italy is still regarded as a group of islands. On the other hand, in all the literature subsequent to Hesiod, Sicily and even the whole coast of Italy appear as known, at least in a general sense, to the Hellenes. The order of succession of the Greek settlements may in like manner be ascertained with some degree of precision. Thucydides evidently regarded Cumæ as the earliest settlement of note in the West; and certainly he was not mistaken. It is true that many a suitable landing-place lay nearer at hand for the Greek mariner, but none were so well protected from storms and from barbarians as the island of Ischia, upon which the town was originally situated; and that such were the prevailing considerations that led to this settlement is evident from the very position, which was subsequently selected for it on the