1. Those that are accounted for by colonization from Greece to Italy within the historical period.
2. Those that are not so explained.
It is the latter upon which a partial confirmation of the doctrine of the present chapter is based.
a. The Æolus of Homer, who in spite of some difficulties of detail, we must look upon as the eponymus of Æolia, has his residence in the islands off the south coast of Italy; and, it must be remembered, that, except so far as this Æolus is the eponymus he is here considered to be, Homer knows nothing of the Æolians.
b. The Ionian Sea is the sea that washes the coasts of Italy, and not the sea which comes in contact with the shores of Ionian Asia.
c. Old geographical names, significant in the Greek language, are commoner in Southern Italy and Sicily, than in Greece itself; as Phalacrium Promontorium, Nebrodes Mons, Clibanus Mons, Petra, Xiphonia Promontorium, Crotalus Fluvius, &c. Nowhere are these commoner than in the Sicanian country, the part generally considered the most barbarian, but, more probably, the part where the character of the aborigines survived longest—Panormus, Ercta, Bathys Fluvius, Cetaria (probably a fishery), Drepanum, Selinus, Ægithallus. Almost all the islands have names more or less Greek, Strongyle, Phœnicodes, Ericodes, and a great number ending in -usa, as Pithec-usa, &c. Ortygia, is mentioned by Hesiod.
d. The names which, in Greek, end in - -οεις take, in Southern Italy, the older forms in -ntum—as Μαλοεις, Maleventum; Σολοεις, Solventum.
e. The Greeks themselves recognise the existence of colonies planted by their forefathers in Italy long anterior to the beginning of the historical period, e.g., that of Cumæ, seventeen generations before the Trojan war. This may fairly be construed into an admission of their ignorance as to their origin.
f. The epithet Magna in Magna Græcia as applied to Southern Italy, is an adjective which in every other instance of its use, denotes the mother country—the colony being designated by the contrary epithet little.
g. The cultus of the eminently Greek goddess, Demeter, was in the eminently Sikel district of Henna.