144 PRINCIPAL EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OP THE 



many populous Greek cities in Asia Minor, on the shores of 

 the JEgean Sea, in Lower Italy, and in Sicily ; that Miletus 

 and Massilia became, like Carthage, the founders of fresh 

 colonies ; that Syracuse, at the summit of its power, fought 

 against Athens, and against the armies of Hannibal and of 

 Hamilcar ; and that Miletus was for a long time the first 

 commercial city in the world after Tyre and Carthage. 



Whilst a life so rich in intellectual movement and anima- 

 tion was thus developed externally by the activity of a people 

 whose internal state was so often violently agitated, and whilst 

 the native cultivation, transplanted to other shores, propa- 

 gated itself afresh, and prosperity increased, new germs 

 of mental national development were every where elicited. 

 Community of language and of worship bound together 

 the most distant members, and through them the mother 

 country took part in the wide circle of the life of other 

 nations. Foreign elements were received into the Greek 

 world without detracting anything from th3 greatness of its 

 own independent character. No doubt the influence of con- 

 tact with the East, and with Egypt before it had become 

 Persian, more than a hundred years before the invasion of 

 Cambyses, must have been more permanent in its nature, 

 than the influence of the settlements of Cecrops from Sais, 

 of Cadmus from Phoenicia, and of Danaus from Chemmis, 

 the reality of which has been much contested, and is at least 

 wrapped in obscurity. 



The peculiar characteristics which, pervading the whole 

 organisation of the Greek colonies, distinguished them from 

 all others, and especially from the Phrenician, arose from the 

 distinctness and original diversity of the races into which 

 the parent nation was divided* In the Hellenic colonies, 



