TEMPLE OF POSEIDON AT PAESTUM.
End of 6th Century B.C.
Paestum, the ancient Poseidonia, was a flourishing Greek Colony in Italy. The colony was founded early in the 6th Century B.C. and in ancient times it was famous for its roses. The temple is one of the best preserved Greek temples out of Attica
The Ionian colonies could claim poets as well as men of science. Chios is said to have been the birthplace of Homer, and Lesbos, one of the largest of the island colonies, was famous as the home of Sappho, not only the first woman whose poetry has come down to us, but one of the great poetesses of the world. Unfortunately we have only a few fragments of her poems.
THE GIFTS OF EVENING
Thou, Hesper, bringest homeward all
That radiant dawn sped far and wide,
The sheep to fold, the goat to stall,
The children to their mother's side.[[4]]
The face of Greece was turned towards the East, but adventurous spirits have always turned towards the unknown West; the Phoenicians had already explored western regions and the Greeks soon followed. The Elysian Fields lay to the west and what might man not discover if he sailed in that direction? The Greeks did not find the Elysian Fields, but they did what proved to be of the most momentous importance in the history of the civilization of the world. They founded colonies in the south of Italy, and these became so flourishing that the whole region was known as Magna Graecia. These Greeks brought their writing, their art, and their poetry and planted them securely in the land that was one day to be ruled by a city, which was then only a little settlement at the foot of seven hills. Rome became mightier than Greece in the art of governing a great empire, and the day was to come when she would rule Greece herself, but in the development of her civilization Rome acknowledged the Greeks as her teachers.
Other Greek colonies were founded at Syracuse in Sicily, and along the north coast of the Mediterranean to what is now Marseilles, and in the south a few were established along the shores of Africa to Naucratis in Egypt. The colonies in the south of Spain and along the north coast of Africa from the Pillars of Hercules to Carthage were in the hands of the Phoenicians, but by the end of the sixth century B.C. the prevailing civilization in the Mediterranean was Greek.
II. IONIA AND LYDIA
The Ionian colonies occupied the coast land of Asia Minor, but the mainland behind them was the Kingdom of Lydia. For a long time the Ionians lived in peace, developing their science, thinking out their ideas, and growing in power. But at the beginning of the sixth century B.C. a new race of kings came to the Lydian throne. They were vigorous and ambitious, and did not approve of the important coast towns with good harbours being in the hands of Greeks. So they attacked them, beginning with Miletus which was besieged. The siege lasted eleven years, but the city did not surrender. At last the Lydians realized that Miletus was being saved by her harbour, and though it could get no food or supplies of any kind by land, everything needed was brought to the city by water. So the King of Lydia gave up the idea of conquering Miletus, and he made a treaty of peace with her.
It was probably not only the impossibility of conquering a seaport that made the King of Lydia give up the siege of Miletus, but the knowledge that a war cloud had arisen in the east which was steadily drawing nearer his land. This was the army of the Medes, a nation which had already helped to destroy Assyria, and whose army was now coming towards Lydia. Several battles took place with no very decisive result, but at length the two armies met in a battle
in which it happened, when the fight had begun, that suddenly the day became night. And this change of the day Thales the Milesian had foretold to the Ionians. The Lydians, however, and the Medes, when they saw that it had become night instead of day, ceased from their fighting and were much more eager both of them that peace should be made between them.[[5]]