PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 513 



and Smyrna were pre-eminently distinguished, to the founda- 

 tion of Syracuse, Croton, and Gyrene. The Indians and Ma- 

 layans made only weak attempts to found colonies on the 

 eastern coast of Africa, in Zokotora (Dioscorides), and in the 

 South Asiatic Archipelago. Amongst the Phoenicians a highly 

 developed colonial system had been extended over a larger space 

 than that occupied by the Greeks, stretching, although with 

 wide intervals between the stations, from the Persian Gulf to 

 Cerne on the western coast of Africa. No mother country 

 ever established a colony which was as powerful from con- 

 quests, and as famed for its commercial undertakings, as Car- 

 thage. But, notwithstanding this greatness, Carthage stood 

 far below that degree of mental and artistical cultivation 

 which has enabled the Greek colonial cities to transmit to us so 

 many noble and lasting forms of art. 



It must not be forgotten that many populous Greek cities 

 flourished simultaneously in Asia Minor, the ^Egean Sea, Lower 

 Italy, and Sicily; and that, like Carthage, the colonial cities 

 of Miletus and Massilia again founded other colonies; that 

 Syracuse, when at the zenith of her power, fought against 

 Athens, and the army of Hannibal and Hamilkar; ami that 

 Miletus was, for a long time, the first commercial city in the 

 world after Tyre and Carthage. Whilst a life so rich in en- 

 terprise was being developed externally by the activity of a 

 people whose internal condition was frequently exposed to 

 violent agitations, new germs of national intellectual develop- 

 ment were continually called forth with the increase of pros- 

 perity and the transmission to other nations of native cultiva- 

 tion. One common language and religion bound together the 

 most distant members of the whole body, and it was by this 

 union that the small parent country was brought within the 

 wider circle embraced by the life of other nations. Foreign 

 elements were incorporated in the Hellenic world, without, on 

 that account, depriving it of any portion of its great and 

 characteristic independence. The influence of contact with the 

 East, and with Egypt before it had been connected with Persia, 

 and above one hundred years before the irruption of Cam- 

 byses, was, no doubt, from its very nature, more permanent 

 than the influence of the colonies of Cecrops from Sais, of 

 Cadmus from Phoenicia, and of Danaus and Chemmis, whose 



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