Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/107

The Coming of the Greeks 63 Here they found broad grainfields along the lower Danube and got possession of the iron mines formerly worked by the Hittites (76). Greek towns were also founded in the delta of the Nile. 91. Greek Settlements in Italy. Looking westward from the western coast of Greece the seamen could faintly perceive the shore of Italy, only fifty miles distant. When they had once crossed to it they coasted around Sicily and far beyond. Here was a new world. Although the Phoenicians were already there, its discovery was as momentous for the Greeks as that of America for later Europe. By 750 B.C. Greek colonies were founded in this new Western world, and within a century they were scattered along the coast of southern Italy to a point north of Naples. Hence this region of southern Italy came to be known as "Great Greece" (see map, p. 122). As the Greeks were by this time superior in civilization to all the native dwellers in Italy, the civilized history of that great peninsula begins with the settlement of the Greeks there. They were the first to bring into Italy such things as writing, literature, architecture, and art. The Greek colonists also crossed over to fertile Sicily, where they drove out the Phoenician trading posts except at the western end of the island. Syracuse, at its southeast, became very soon the most cultured, as well as the most powerful, city of the Greek world. At Massilia (Marseilles), on the coast of later France, the Western Greeks founded a town which controlled the trade up the Rhone valley. In this way the Greeks expanded till their settlements stretched from the Black Sea along the north shore of the Mediterranean almost to the Atlantic. 92. Greek Business and Factories. Before long the merchant fleets of the Greeks were making their way along the coasts of the Mediterranean, bearing to distant towns their metal work, woven goods, and beautiful pottery. To meet the demand, the Greek workmen were obliged to enlarge their shops, which had formerly done no more than supply the needs of a single estate. Unable to find the necessary free workmen to help him, the proprietor