t. The most
remarkable phenomenon of this sort is presented by Apulia, which after
the fifth century of Rome gradually laid aside its barbarian dialect
and silently became Hellenized. This change was brought about, as in
Macedonia and Epirus, not by colonization, but by civilization, which
seems to have gone hand in hand with the land commerce of Tarentum; at
least that hypothesis is favoured by the facts, that the districts
of the Poediculi and Daunii who were on friendly terms with the
Tarentines carried out their Hellenization more completely than the
Sallentines who lived nearer to Tarentum but were constantly at feud
with it, and that the towns that were soonest Graecized, such as Arpi,
were not situated on the coast. The stronger influence exerted by
Hellenism over Apulia than over any other Italian region is explained
partly by its position, partly by the slight development of any
national culture of its own, and partly also perhaps by its
nationality presenting a character less alien to the Greek stock than
that of the rest of Italy.(45) We have already called attention(46) to
the fact that the southern Sabellian stocks, although at the outset in
concert with the tyrants of Syracuse they crushed and destroyed the
Hellenism of Magna Graecia, were at the same time affected by contact
and mingling with the Greeks, so that some of them, such as the
Bruttians and Nolans, adopted the Greek language by the side of their
native tongue, and others, such as the Lucanians and a part of the
Campanians, adopted at least Greek writing and Greek manners. Etruria
likewise showed tendencies towards a kindred development in the
remarkable vases which have been discovered(47) belonging to this
period, rivalling those of Campania and Lucania; and though Latium and
Samnium remained more strangers to Hellenism, there were not wanting
there also traces of an incipient and ever-growing influence of Greek
culture. In all branches of the development of Rome during this epoch,
in legislation and coinage, in religion, in the formation of national
legend, we encounter traces of the Greeks; and from the commencement
of the fifth century in particular, in other words, after the conquest
of Campania, the Greek influence on Roman life appears rapidly and
constantly on the increase. In the fourth century occurred the
erection of the "-Graecostasis-"--remarkable in the very form of the
word--a platform in the Roman Forum for eminent Greek s