ns. About the
age of Cyrus and Croesus, just when the wise Bias was endeavouring
to induce the Ionians to emigrate in a body from Asia Minor and
settle in Sardinia (about 200), the Carthaginian general Malchus
anticipated them, and subdued a considerable portion of that important
island by force of arms; half a century later, the whole coast of
Sardinia appears in the undisputed possession of the Carthaginian
community. Corsica on the other hand, with the towns of Alalia
and Nicaea, fell to the Etruscans, and the natives paid to these
tribute of the products of their poor island, pitch, wax, and honey.
In the Adriatic sea, moreover, the allied Etruscans and Carthaginians
ruled, as in the waters to the west of Sicily and Sardinia. The
Greeks, indeed, did not give up the struggle. Those Rhodians and
Cnidians, who had been driven out of Lilybaeum, established themselves
on the islands between Sicily and Italy and founded there the town
of Lipara (175). Massilia flourished in spite of its isolation, and
soon monopolized the trade of the region from Nice to the Pyrenees.
At the Pyrenees themselves Rhoda (now Rosas) was established as an
offset from Lipara, and it is affirmed that Zacynthians settled in
Saguntum, and even that Greek dynasts ruled at Tingis (Tangiers)
in Mauretania. But the Hellenes no longer gained ground; after
the foundation of Agrigentum they did not succeed in acquiring any
important additions of territory on the Adriatic or on the western
sea, and they remained excluded from the Spanish waters as well
as from the Atlantic Ocean. Every year the Liparaeans had their
conflicts with the Tuscan "sea-robbers," and the Carthaginians with
the Massiliots, the Cyrenaeans, and above all with the Sicilian
Greeks; but no results of permanent moment were on either side
achieved, and the issue of struggles which lasted for centuries
was, on the whole, the simple maintenance of the -status quo-.

Thus Italy was--if but indirectly--indebted to the Phoenicians for
the exemption of at least her central and northern provinces from
colonization, and for the counter-development of a national maritime
power there, especially in Etruria. But there are not wanting
indications that the Phoenicians already found it worth while
to manifest that jealousy which is usually associated with naval
domination, if not in reference to their Latin allies, at any rate
in reference to their Etruscan confederates, whose naval power was