Page:The life and travels of Herodotus Vol I.djvu/24

2 men of nobler intellect and higher purpose, who disdained to pander to a mob, were ready to mingle in the tide of emigration which at intervals relieved the crowded states. Thus it was that Herodotus had joined the band of colonists proceeding to Italy. The great father of history, in the prime of life, and possessing an almost unprecedented experience of men and things, had been driven from his native city by the fury of party spirit, and forced to seek a home in a foreign soil, where he might forget the ingratitude of his countrymen, but cherish a fond remembrance of the glorious deeds of their mighty fathers.

The peninsula of Italy is one of the fairest limbs of the European continent. On her knee sits imperial Rome; the hollow of her foot is laved by the blue waters of the Gulf of Tarentum. In B. C. 443, just three centuries after the stern old Romans first built their nest on the Palatine hill, Herodotus and his compatriots landed on the shore of the Tarentine gulf. The sunshine of a summer morning joyously beamed upon a land where the scenery was as green and the sky as blue as in their own bright isles of Greece. Before them was the plain of Sybaris, as lovely as the garden of the Hesperides. Groves of orange and citron threw their pleasant shadows upon the sward; sloping hills were covered with the richest verdure; whilst far away in the interior the background of that glorious landscape was formed by the towering summits of the snow-capped Apennines. The fatigues and dangers of the weary voyage were now all forgotten. The turbulent assemblies and war of faction, in which many of the emigrants had so recently engaged, seemed as distant as the days of their childhood. The friendly Sybarites, clad in the airy and graceful costume of Hellas, had crowded the beach since the early morning, and anxiously watched the little fleet approaching their shores. At length they began to recognise the images at the several prows, and the pennons at the sterns; and