ce during
the regal period of Rome; but no old Greek colony can be pointed
out further to the north, with the exception perhaps of the
insignificant settlement at Black Corcyra (Curzola, about 174?). No
adequate explanation has yet been given why the Greek colonization
developed itself in this direction to so meagre an extent. Nature
herself appeared to direct the Hellenes thither, and in fact from
the earliest times there existed a regular traffic to that region
from Corinth and still more from the settlement at Corcyra (Corfu)
founded not long after Rome (about 44); a traffic, which had as its
emporia on the Italian coast the towns of Spina and Atria, situated
at the mouth of the Po. The storms of the Adriatic, the inhospitable
character at least of the Illyrian coasts, and the barbarism of
the natives are manifestly not in themselves sufficient to explain
this fact. But it was a circumstance fraught with the most momentous
consequences for Italy, that the elements of civilization which
came from the east did not exert their influence on its eastern
provinces directly, but reached them only through the medium of those
that lay to the west. The Adriatic commerce carried on by Corinth
and Corcyra was shared by the most easterly mercantile city of
Magna Graecia, the Doric Tarentum, which by the possession of Hydrus
(Otranto) had the command, on the Italian side, of the entrance of
the Adriatic. Since, with the exception of the ports at the mouth
of the Po, there were in those times no emporia worthy of mention
along the whole east coast--the rise of Ancona belongs to a far
later period, and later still the rise of Brundisium--it may well
be conceived that the mariners of Epidamnus and Apollonia frequently
discharged their cargoes at Tarentum. The Tarentines had also much
intercourse with Apulia by land; all the Greek civilization to be
met with in the south-east of Italy owed its existence to them.
That civilization, however, was during the present period only in
its infancy; it was not until a later epoch that the Hellenism of
Apulia was developed.

Relations of the Western Italians to the Greeks

It cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that the west coast
of Italy northward of Vesuvius was frequented in very early times
by the Hellenes, and that there were Hellenic factories on its
promontories and islands. Probably the earliest evidence of such
voyages is the localizing of the legend of Odysseus on the