Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/162

142 barians, and from other Greeks, by the firm bond of a federal constitution. The language of Polybius, regarding the Achæan symmachy in the Peloponnesus may be applied also to these Italian Achæans; "not only did they live in federal and friendly communion, but they availed themselves of the same laws, and the same weights, measures, and coins, as well as of the same magistrates, councillors, and judges."

The league of the Achaean cities was strictly a colonization. The cities had no harbours— alone had a paltry roadstead—and they had no commerce of their own; the Sybarite prided himself on growing gray between the bridges of his lagoon-city, and Milesians and Etruscans bought and sold for him. These Achæan Greeks, however, were not in possession merely of a narrow belt along the coast, but ruled from sea to sea in the "land of wine," and of "oxen" (🇬🇷, 🇬🇷) or the "great Hellas;" the native agricultural population was compelled to farm their lands and to pay to them tribute in the character of clients, or even of serfs. Sybaris—in its time the largest city in Italy—exercised dominion over four barbarian tribes and five-and-twenty townships, and was able to found Laus and Posidonia on the other sea. The surprisingly fertile lowlands of the Crathis and the Bradanus yielded a superabundant produce to the Sybarites and Metapontines—it was there perhaps that grain was first cultivated for exportation. The height of prosperity which these states in a very short time attained, is strikingly attested by the only surviving works of art of these Italian Achæans, their coins of chaste antiquely beautiful workmanship—the earliest monuments of Italian art and writing which we possess, as it can be shown that they had already begun to be coined in. These coins show, that the Achæans of the west not merely participated in the noble development of plastic art that was at this very time taking place in the mother land, but were perhaps even superior in technical skill. For while the silver pieces, which were in use about that time in Greece proper and among the Dorians in Italy, were thick, often stamped only on one side, and in general without inscription, the Italian Achæans with great and independent skill struck from two similar dies, partly cut in relief, partly sunk, large thin silver coins always furnished with inscriptions and displaying the advanced organization of a civilized state in the style of impression, by which they were carefully pro-