500 Rev. Mr Williams on one Source of the 



gurians, 1 a nation confessedly Celtic, seem to have shared the 

 country with them. In historical times these are described as 

 possessing the upper vale of the Po, the Maritime Alps, and the 

 Northern Apennines, while the Umbri were confined to the cen- 

 tral group, the most important natural fortresses of Italy. The 

 whole of the original population of eastern Italy, with the excep- 

 tion of those who took refuge in the central Apennines, was re- 

 duced under the power and influence of the Hellenic colonists, 

 who encircled the southern Peninsula with a line of Grecian cities 

 of surpassing wealth and magnificence. But time has grudged to 

 us the knowledge of the history of Sybaris, Crotona, Elea, and 

 Paestum. We read that Sybaris was once the chief of five and 

 twenty cities, and of four nations, and that it could bring three 

 hundred thousand warriors into the field. Crotona was not infe- 

 rior in arms, arts, or philosophy — but internal dissensions, the 

 destruction of the enlightened classes by a riotous democracy, and 

 the fatal aid of their half conquered subjects, the native tribes, hur- 

 ried them to a premature decay. Sybaris fell a. c. 508, barely 

 within the verge of accredited history, and Crotona soon follow- 

 ed : destined, however, to a more lingering death by the hands of 

 the barbarian Bruttii. The Lucanians, a mountain tribe, which 

 had taken the lead in the attacks upon the Grecian States, had 

 undoubtedly imbibed some portion of Grecian civilisation. In 

 Niebuhr's - words, " hereditary enemies as they were, they never- 

 theless acquired the language to such a degree, that their ambas- 

 sador filled the popular Assembly at Syracuse with surprise and 

 enthusiasm by his pure Doric. Nor would the authors of Pytha- 



' The Ligurians were themselves Ambrones, or Ombro-nes, as is evident from the 

 story told by Plutarch in the life of Marius : — " The Ambrones came on crying 

 out Ambrones, Ambrones ; this they did either to encourage each other, or to ter- 

 rify the enemy with their name. The Ligurians were the first of the Italians that 

 moved against them, and when they heard the enemy cry Ambrones, they echoed 

 back the word, which was their own ancient name." The English reader may not 

 know that the Cumrian name for England is to this day Loiger or Liguria. 



2 Vol. i. p. 84. 



