Besides the letters of the alphabet, the scale of weight and that of coined money passed from Phenicia and Assyria into Greece. It has been shown by Boeckh, in his “Metrologie,” that the Æginæan scale,[644]—with its divisions, talent, mna, and obolus,—is identical with the Babylonian and Phenician: and that the word mna, which forms the central point of the scale, is of Chaldæan origin. On this I have already touched in a former chapter, while relating the history of Pheidôn of Argos, by whom what is called the Æginæan scale was first promulgated.
In tracing, therefore, the effect upon the Greek mind of early intercourse with the various Asiatic nations, we find that, as the Greeks made up their musical scale, so important an element of their early mental culture, in part by borrowing from Lydians and Phrygians,—so also their monetary and statical system, their alphabetical writing, and their duodecimal division of the day, measured by the gnomon and the shadow, were all derived from Assyrians and Phenicians. The early industry and commerce of these countries was thus in many ways available to Grecian advance, and would probably have become more so, if the great and rapid rise of the more barbarous Persians had not reduced them all to servitude. The Phenicians, though unkind rivals, were at the same time examples and stimulants to Greek maritime aspiration; and the Phenician worship of that goddess whom the Greeks knew under the name of Aphroditê, became communicated to the latter in Cyprus, in Kythêra, in Sicily,—perhaps also in Corinth.
The sixth century B. C., though a period of decline for Tyre and Sidon, was a period of growth for their African colony Carthage, which appears during this century in considerable traffic with the Tyrrhenian towns on the southern coast of Italy, and as thrusting out the Phôkæan settlers from Alalia in Corsica. The wars of the Carthaginians with the Grecian colonies in Sicily, so far as they are known to us, commence shortly after 500 B. C., and continue at intervals, with fluctuating success, for two centuries and a half.
The foundation of Carthage by the Tyrians is placed at different dates, the lowest of which, however, is 819 B. C.: other authorities place it in 878 B. C., and we have no means of deciding between them. I have already remarked that it is by no means the oldest of the Tyrian colonies; but though Utica and Gadês may have been more ancient than Carthage,[645] the latter greatly outstripped them in wealth and power, and acquired a sort of federal preëminence over all the Phenician colonies on the coast of Africa. In those later times when the dominion of the Carthaginians had reached its maximum, it comprised the towns of Utica, Hippo, Adrumêtum, and Leptis,—all original Phenician foundations, and enjoying probably, even as dependents of Carthage, a certain qualified autonomy,—besides a great number of smaller towns planted by themselves, and inhabited by a mixed population called Liby-Phenicians. Three hundred such towns,—a dependent territory covering half the space between the lesser and the greater Syrtis, and in many parts remarkably fertile,—a city said to contain seven hundred thousand inhabitants, active, wealthy, and seemingly homogeneous,—and foreign dependencies in Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic isles, and Spain,—all this aggregate of power, under one political management, was sufficient to render the contest of Carthage even with Rome for some time doubtful.
But by what steps the Carthaginians raised themselves to such a pitch of greatness we have no information, and we are even left to guess how much of it had already been acquired in the sixth century B. C. As in the case of so many other cities, we have a foundation-legend, decorating the moment of birth, and then nothing farther. The Tyrian princess Dido or Elisa, daughter of Belus, sister of Pygmalion king of Tyre, and wife of the wealthy Sichæus priest of Hêraklês in that city,—is said to have been left a widow in consequence of the murder of Sichæus by Pygmalion, who seized the treasures belonging to his victim. But Dido found means to disappoint him of his booty, possessed herself of the gold which had tempted Pygmalion, and secretly emigrated, carrying with her the sacred insignia of Hêraklês: a considerable body of Tyrians followed her. She settled at Carthage on a small hilly peninsula joined by a narrow tongue of land to the continent, purchasing from the natives as much land as could be surrounded by an ox’s hide, which she caused to be cut into the thinnest strip, and thus made it sufficient for the site of her first citadel, Byrsa, which afterwards grew up into the great city of Carthage. As soon as her new settlement had acquired footing, she was solicited in marriage by several princes of the native tribes, especially by the Gætulian Jarbas, who threatened war if he were refused. Thus pressed by the clamors of her own people, who desired to come into alliance with the natives, yet irrevocably determined to maintain exclusive fidelity to her first husband, she escaped the conflict by putting an end to her life. She pretended to acquiesce in the proposition of a second marriage, requiring only delay sufficient to offer an expiatory sacrifice to the manes of Sichæus: a vast funeral pile was erected, and many victims slain upon it, in the midst of which Dido pierced her own bosom with a sword, and perished in the flames. Such is the legend to which Virgil has given a new color by interweaving the adventures of Æneas, and thus connecting the foundation legends of Carthage and Rome, careless of his deviation from the received mythical chronology. Dido was worshipped as a goddess at Carthage until the destruction of the city:[646] and it has been imagined with some probability that she is identical with Astartê, the divine patroness under whose auspices the colony was originally established, as Gadês and Tarsus were founded under those of Hêraklês,—the tale of the funeral pile and self-burning appearing in the religious ceremonies of other Cilician and Syrian towns.[647] Phenician religion and worship was diffused along with the Phenician colonies throughout the larger portion of the Mediterranean.
The Phôkæans of Ionia, who amidst their adventurous voyages westward established the colony of Massalia, (as early as 600 B. C.) were only enabled to accomplish this by a naval victory over the Carthaginians,—the earliest example of Greek and Carthaginian collision which has been preserved to us. The Carthaginians were jealous of commercial rivalry, and their traffic with the Tuscans and Latins in Italy, as well as their lucrative mine-working in Spain, dates from a period when Greek commerce in those regions was hardly known. In Greek authors, the denomination Phenicians is often used to designate the Carthaginians, as well as the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon, so that we cannot always distinguish which of the two is meant; but it is remarkable that the distant establishment of Gadês, and the numerous settlements planted for commercial purposes along the western coast of Africa, and without the strait of Gibraltar, are expressly ascribed to the Tyrians.[648] Many of the other Phenician establishments on the southern coast of Spain seemed to have owed their origin to Carthage rather than to Tyre. But the relations between the two, so far as we know them, were constantly amicable, and Carthage, even at the period of her highest glory, sent Theôri with a tribute of religious recognition to the Tyrian Hêraklês: the visit of these envoys coincided with the siege of the town by Alexander the Great. On that critical occasion, the wives and children of the Tyrians were sent to find shelter at Carthage: two centuries before, when the Persian empire was in its age of growth and expansion, the Tyrians had refused to aid Kambysês with their fleet in his plans for conquering Carthage, and thus probably preserved their colony from subjugation.[649]
CHAPTER XXII.
WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE — IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL.
The stream of Grecian colonization to the westward, as far as we can be said to know it authentically, with names and dates, begins from the 11th Olympiad. But it is reasonable to believe that there were other attempts earlier than this, though we must content ourselves with recognizing them as generally probable. There were doubtless detached bands of volunteer emigrants or marauders, who, fixing themselves in some situation favorable to commerce or piracy, either became mingled with the native tribes, or grew up by successive reinforcements into an acknowledged town. Not being able to boast of any filiation from the prytaneium of a known Grecian city, these adventurers were often disposed to fasten upon the inexhaustible legend of the Trojan war, and ascribe their origin to one of the victorious heroes in the host of Agamemnôn, alike distinguished for their valor and for their ubiquitous dispersion after the siege. Of such alleged settlements by fugitive Grecian or Trojan heroes, there were a great number, on various points throughout the shores of the Mediterranean; and the same honorable origin was claimed even by many non-Hellenic towns.
In the eighth century B. C., when this westerly stream of Grecian colonization begins to assume an authentic shape (735 B. C.), the population of Sicily—as far as our scanty information permits us to determine it—consisted of two races completely distinct from each other—Sikels and Sikans—besides the Elymi, a mixed race apparently distinct from both, and occupying Eryx and Egesta, near the westernmost corner of the island,—and the Phenician colonies and coast establishments formed for purposes of trade. According to the belief both of Thucydidês and Philistus, these Sikans, though they gave themselves out as indigenous, were yet of Iberian origin[650] and emigrants of earlier date than the Sikels,—by whom they had been invaded and restricted to the smaller western half of the island, and who were said to have crossed over originally from the south-western corner of the Calabrian peninsula, where a portion of the nation still dwelt in the time of Thucydidês. The territory known to Greek writers of the fifth century B. C. by the names of Œnotria on the coast of the Mediterranean, and Italia on that of the gulfs of Tarentum and Squillace, included all that lies south of a line drawn across the breadth of the country, from the gulf of Poseidônia (Pæstum) and the river Silarus on the Mediterranean sea, to the north-west corner of the gulf of Tarentum; it was also bounded northwards by the Iapygians and Messapians, who occupied the Salentine peninsula, and the country immediately adjoining to Tarentum, and by the Peuketians on the Ionic gulf. According to the logographers Pherekydês and Hellanikus,[651] Œnotrus and Peuketius were sons of Lykaôn, grandsons of Pelasgus, and emigrants in very early times from Arcadia to this territory. An important statement in Stephanus Byzantinus[652] acquaints us that the serf-population, whom the great Hellenic cities in this portion of Italy employed in the cultivation of their lands, were called Pelasgi, seemingly even in the historical times: it is upon this name, probably, that the mythical genealogy of Pherekydês is constructed. This Œnotrian or Pelasgian race were the population whom the Greek colonists found there on their arrival. They were known apparently under other names, such as the Sikels,—mentioned even in the Odyssey, though their exact locality in that poem cannot be ascertained—the Italians, or Itali, properly so called,—the Morgêtes,—and the Chaones,— all of them names of tribes either cognate or subdivisional.[653] The Chaones or Chaonians are also found, not only in Italy, but in Epirus, as one of the most considerable of the Epirotic tribes,—while Pandosia, the ancient residence of the Œnotrian kings in the southern corner of Italy,[654] was also the name of a township or locality in Epirus, with a neighboring river Acheron in both: from hence, and from some other similarities of name, it has been imagined that Epirots, Œnotrians, Sikels, etc., were all names of cognate people, and all entitled to be comprehended under the generic appellation of Pelasgi. That they belonged to the same ethnical kindred, there seems fair reason to presume, and also that in point of language, manners, and character, they were not very widely separated from the ruder branches of the Hellenic race.