THE BEGINNINGS OF METALLURGY. 91 



His sons conquered Mycenae. A Semitic life also ruled in Orchome- 

 nos a few generations before the Trojan War, The city was wealthy, 

 and the extensive plain was made tillable by an extensive system of 

 aqueducts. Thebes, which was also founded by immigrants from the 

 East, was the rival of this colony. The mythical hero Cadmus built 

 the Cadmeian citadel and surrounded the city with the famous walls ; 

 he taught the nomadic people agriculture and the Phoenician writing, 

 opened mines, and constructed aqueducts. The colony flourished rap- 

 idly, and accomplished the ruin of the formerly rich Orchomenos, 

 Lastly, the myths tell of the doughty Sisyphus, who founded Corinth 

 and established there the Semitic worship and Eastern civilization. 



A lively activity went out from these and other colonists and colo- 

 nies. Even the Semitic religion was partly accepted by the Greeks. 

 The gloomy and repulsive service of Melkarth was always strange and 

 abhorrent to them, but the worship of the fructifying Dionysus with 

 its jolly festivals was warmly received. It entered into the life of the 

 Hellenes and became national not only in the strongly Semitic islands, 

 but everywhere on the Grecian mainland. The lascivious, mystic 

 worship of the Semitic goddess of love, although humanized and beau- 

 tified, was also one of the i^eculiarities of the Grecian people. 



Notwithstanding this many-sided and powerful Semitic influence, 

 which lasted for several centuries, the striving for national indepen- 

 dence was strong even in the time of the earlier myths. Theseus, 

 about a hundred years before the Trojan War, freed Athens from 

 the island-chief Minos, to whom the state was then tributary. The 

 Argonauts went out from Orchomenos and sought the distant metal- 

 bearing land of Aja. The sons of the Argonauts besieged Troy, 

 where they obtained treasures, the multitude and splendor of which 

 astonished them. These were the first efforts of the Greeks to try 

 their strength with the higher civilized Asiatics. 



The great dispersion of the Grecian tribes took place in the suc- 

 ceeding times. The vigorous people spread on every side, and de- 

 veloped an unprecedented colonial activity. In the tenth and ninth 

 centuries it settled numerous islands, and established a constant con- 

 nection with the Asiatic mainland. The Milesians founded in the 

 Pontus in the eighth century the city of Sinope, where they traded in 

 iron and slaves, and Trapezium flourished in the ore-bearing country 

 of the Chalybes. Syracuse, the metropolis of Italian Greece, was 

 founded, and the colonization of Agrigentum from Rhodes followed. 

 In the seventh century rose the cities of Selinus, Sybaris, and Croton. 

 While the Corinthians were spreading out in the Mediterranean, the 

 dominions of the Milesians were growing up on the Black Sea. In 

 the sixth century, they had more than seventy colonies in those re- 

 gions, and the productions of Colchis, of the Caucasus, and Armenia, 

 of the Ural and the Danubian countries were flowing to them. 



The ancient Oriental civilization, however, still long kept a promi- 



