to the present day the venerable name of the Anatolian mother-city.  Nowhere in Italy, accordingly, were the scenes of the legends of Asia Minor so vividly and tenaciously localized as in the district of Cumae, where the earliest voyagers to the west, full of those legends of western wonders, first stepped upon the fabled land and left the traces of that world of story, which they believed that they were treading, in the rocks of the Sirens and the lake of Avernus leading to the lower world.  On the supposition, moreover, that it was in Cumae that the Greeks first became the neighbours of the Italians, it is easy to explain why the name of that Italian stock which was settled immediately around Cumae, the name of Opicans, came to be employed by them for centuries afterwards to designate the Italians collectively.  There is a further credible tradition, that a considerable interval elapsed between the settlement at Cumae and the main Hellenic immigration into Lower Italy and Sicily, and that in this immigration Ionians from Chalcis and from Naxos took the lead.  Naxos in Sicily is said to have been the oldest of all the Greek towns founded by strict colonization in Italy or Sicily; the Achaean and Dorian colonizations followed, but not until a later period.

It appears, however, to be quite impossible to fix the dates of this series of events with even approximate accuracy.  The founding of the Achaean city of Sybaris in 33, and that of the Dorian city Tarentum in 46, are probably the most ancient dates in Italian history, the correctness, or at least approximation to correctness, of which may be looked upon as established.  But how far beyond that epoch the sending forth of the earlier Ionian colonies reached back, is quite as uncertain as is the age which gave birth to the poems of Hesiod or even of Homer.  If Herodotus is correct in the period which he assigns to Homer, the Greeks were still unacquainted with Italy a century before the foundation of Rome.  The date thus assigned however, like all other statements respecting the Homeric age, is matter not of testimony, but of inference; and any one who carefully weighs the history of the Italian alphabets as well as the remarkable fact that the Italians had become acquainted with the Greek people before the name “Hellenes” had emerged for the race, and the Italians borrowed their designation for the Hellenes from the stock of the -Grai- or -Graeci- that early fell into abeyance in Hellas,(1) will be inclined to carry back the earliest intercourse of the Italians with the Greeks to an age considerably mere remote.

Character of the Greek Immigration

The history of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks forms no part of the history of Italy; the Hellenic colonists of the west always retained the closest connection with their original home and participated in the national festivals and privileges of Hellenes.  But it is of importance even as bearing on Italy, that we should indicate the diversities of character that prevailed in the Greek settlements there, and at least exhibit some of the leading features which enabled the Greek colonization to exercise so varied an influence on Italy.