THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. 291 



they were social protozoa. When colonization took place, the city 

 split " by natural fracture " (the words are Grote's) into two or more 

 cities, each an autonomous and separate unit, as Phoca3a sent nearly 

 one half of its citizens to Sardinia. Or a city gave birth to a num- 

 ber of cities, as Andros (itself a colony of Eretria]^ to Same, Akan- 

 thus, Stageira, and Argilus. Sometimes even Greek and Phcenician 

 colonies (celebrated for their independence) remained connected 

 with the mother city, as when Sybaris ruled over twenty-five de- 

 pendent towns, and Carthage welded three hundred communities 

 into her wide commercial empire. Often the rejn-oduction was con- 

 centrated into a single extrusion or overflow, as when Thera colo- 

 nized Gyrene. Most of the colonies were smaller than the metropo- 

 lis, but Sybaris and Carthage must have greatly exceeded the parent 

 states. 



The Roman colonies were of higher structure. They may be 

 described as midway between the city type of colony and the national 

 type. The earliest were hived off from the mother city and acquired 

 some of the civic character that she retained all through her history 

 till she was nationalized in 1870. They may be compared, like 

 certain of the Greek colonial groups, to the progeny that surrounds 

 a zoophyte and 'remains in asexual continuity with it; but, though 

 they long retained a certain independence, they showed that they 

 belonged to a higher type by being ultimately incorporated with the 

 Roman Empire. 



The earliest modern colonies, with a still higher potentiality of 

 future development, had the same asexual character as the earliest 

 Phcenician, Greek, and Roman colonies. They were the spontane- 

 ous offshoots of the mother country, and they were of low organiza- 

 tion. The whole asexual or unorganized division may be classified 

 in five or six groups. 



The pioneers of colonization were pirates and marauders, fisher- 

 men and navigators, hunters and traders, explorers and discoverers, 

 missionaries, runaways, adventurers, and convicts. It would be 

 impossible to make a tripos of these very miscellaneous groups, or 

 arrange them in the order of time or importance. As the exterior 

 cells of a floating organism push outward at one or more points in 

 search of food, many, perhaps most, colonies have their beginnings 

 in the spontaneous efforts of independent sections of a community, 

 situated on or near its boundaries, which extend to ever more distant 

 parts their exertions in search of a livelihood. It is easier to rob 

 others than to procure spoil or food where they found or reared it, 

 and so privateers and marauding adventurers may have preceded 

 fishermen and hunters. The earliest Greek and Roman colonies 

 seem to have been founded by just such bands. The Spanish and 



