|
Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson
Page 12
This league of the Achaean cities was strictly a colonization. The cities had no harbours--Croton alone had a paltry roadstead--and they had no commerce of their own; the Sybarite prided himself on growing gray between the bridges of his lagoon-city, and Milesians and Etruscans bought and sold for him.
These Achaean Greeks, however, were not merely in possession of a narrow belt along the coast, but ruled from sea to sea in the "land of wine" and "of oxen" (--Oinotria--, --Italia--) or the "great Greece;" the native agricultural population was compelled to farm their lands and to pay to them tribute in the character of clients or even of serfs. Sybaris--in its time the largest city in Italy--exercised dominion over four barbarian tribes and five-and-twenty townships, and was able to found Laus and Posidonia on the other sea.
The exceedingly fertile low grounds of the Crathis and Bradanus yielded a superabundant produce to the Sybarites and Metapontines--it was there perhaps that grain was first cultivated for exportation. The height of prosperity which these states in an incredibly short time attained is strikingly attested by the only surviving works of art of these Italian Achaeans, their coins of chaste antiquely beautiful workmanship--the earliest monuments of art and writing in Italy which we possess, as it can be shown that they had already begun to be coined in 174.
Do you see any typos or other mistakes? Please let us know and correct them
|
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/rome/1-10-greeks-italy-tuscans-carthaginians.asp?pg=12