Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/164

144 Greek characteristics, which were able elsewhere to retain a vigorous vitality notwithstanding all political misfortunes, disappeared more rapidly, more completely, and more ingloriously in Sybaris and Metapontum, in Croton and Posidonia, than in any other region; and the bilingual mongrel people, which arose in subsequent times out of the remains of the native Italians and Achæans and the more recent immigrants of Sabellian descent, never attained any real prosperity. This catastrophe, however, belongs in point of time to the succeeding period.

The settlements of the other Greeks were of a different character, and exercised a very different effect upon Italy. They by no means despised agriculture and the acquisition of territory; it was not the wont of the Hellenes, at least after they reached their full vigour, to rest content after the manner of the Phœnicians with a fortified factory in the midst of a barbarian land. But all their cities were founded primarily and especially for the sake of trade, and accordingly, altogether differing from those of the Achæans, they were uniformly established beside the best harbours and landing-places. These cities were very various in their origin, and in the occasion and period of their respective foundations; but there subsisted between them certain points of common agreement or at least of contradistinction from the league of the Achæan cities—such as the common use by all of them of the more recent Greek alphabet, and the very Dorism of their language, which pervaded at an early date even those towns, that, like Cumæ for example, originally spoke the soft Ionic dialect. These settlements were of very various degrees of importance in their bearing on the development of Italy: it is sufficient at present to notice those which exercised a decided influence over the destinies of the Italian races, the Doric Tarentum, and the Ionic Cumæ.

Of all the Hellenic settlements in Italy, Tarentum was destined to play the most brilliant part. The excellent harbour, the only good one on the whole southern coast,