Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/373

CUiLE IN ITALY 357 the strait of Messina, 1 with all the hazards of Tyrrhenian piracy as well as of Scylla and Charybdis. The Campanian Cumas known almost entirely by this its Latin designation received its name and a portion of its inhabitants from the JEolic Kyme in Asia Minor. A joint band of settlers, partly from this latter town, partly from Chalkis in Eubcea, the former under the Kymiean Hippokles, the latter under the Chalkidian Megasthe- ues, ha,ving combined to form the new town, it was settled by agreement that Kyme should bestow the name, and that Chalkis should enjoy the title and honors of the mother-city .- Cumae, situated on the neck of the peninsula which terminates in cape Misenum, occupied a lofty and rocky hill overhanging the sea, 3 and difficult of access on the land side. The unexampled fertility of the Phlegnean plains in the immediate vicinity of the city, the copious supply of fish in the Lucrine lake, 4 and the gold mines in the neighboring island of Pithekusce, both subsisted and enriched the colonists. They were joined by fresh settlers from Chalkis, from Eretria, and even from Samos ; and became numerous enough to form distinct towns at Dika?archia and Nea- polis, thus spreading over a large portion of the bay of Naples. In the hollow rock under the very walls of the town was situated the cavern of the prophetic Sibyl, a parallel and reproduction of the Gergithian Sibyl, near Kyme in JEolis : in the immediate neighborhood, too, stood the Avild woods and dark lake of Aver- nus, consecrated to the subterranean gods, and offering an estab- lishment of priests, with ceremonies evoking the dead, for pur- poses of prophecy or for solving doubts and mysteries. It was here that Grecian imagination localized the Cimmerians and the fable of Odysseus ; and the Cunueans derived gains from the nu- 1 Ephorus, Frag. 52, ed. Didot. 2 Strabo, v, p. 243 ; Vclleius Paterc. i, 5. 3 See the site of Cumce as described by Agathias (on occasion of the siege of the place by Narses, in 552 A. D.), Histor. i, 8-10 ; also by Strabo, v, p. 244. 4 Diodor. iv, 21, v, Tl ; Polyb. iii, 91 ; Pliny, II. N. iii, 5 ; Livy, viii, 22. InBaiuno sinu Campania) contra Puteolanam civitatcm lacus sunt duo, Avcrnns ct Lucrinus : qui olim proptcr piscium copiam vcctigalia magna I raestabant," (Scrviiis al Virg. (Jcorgic. ii, 1G1.)