Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/406

390 HISTORY OF GREECE. of the country originally known as Italy, within which Herodotus includes it, while Antiochus considers it in lapygia, and regards Metapontium as the last Greek town in Italy. Its immediate neighbors were the lapygians, who, under vari- ous subdivisions of name and dialect, seem to have occupied the greater part of south-eastern Italy, including the peninsula de- nominated after them, yet sometimes also called the Salentine, between the Adriatic and the Tarentine gulf, and who are even stated at one time to have occupied some territory on the south east of that gulf, near the site of Kroton. The lapygian name appears to have comprehended Messapians, Salentines, and Kalabrians ; according to some, even Peuketians and Daunians, as far along the Adriatic as Mount Garganus, or Drion ; Skylax notices in his time (about 360 B. c.) five different tongues in the country which he calls lapygia. 1 The Messapians and Salen- inhnbitants of Taranto. Botb seas abound with varieties of tcstacca, but the inner gulf (the Marc Piccolo) is esteemed most favorable to their growth and flavor : the sandy bed is literally blackened by the mussels that cover it ; the boats that glide over its surface are laden with them ; they emboss the rocks that border the strand, and appear equally abundant on the shore, piled up in heaps." Mr. Craven goes on to illustrate still farther the wonderful abundance of this fishery; but that which has been already transcribed, while it illustrates the above-noticed remark of Aristotle, will at the same time help to explain the prosperity and physical abundance of the ancient Tarcntum. For an elaborate account of the state of cultivation, especially of the olive, near the degenerate modern Taranto, see the Travels of M. De Salis Marschlins in the Kingdom of Naples (translated by Aufrere, London, 1795), sect. 5, pp. 82-107, 163-178. 1 Skylax does not mention at all the name of Italy ; he gives to the whole coast, from Rhegium to Poseidonia on the Mediterranean, and from the same point to the limit between Thurii and Herakleia on the gulf of Tarcn- tum, the name of Lucania (c. 12-13). From this point he extends lapygia to the Mount Drion, or Garganus, so that he includes not only Metapontium, but also Herakleia in lapygia. Antiochus draws the line between Italy and Itpygia at the cxtiemity of the Metapontine territory; comprehending Metapontium in Italy, and Tarentum in lapygia (Antiochus, Frag. 6. ed. Didot; ap. Strabo, vi, p. 254). Herodotus, however, speaks not only of Metapontinm but also of Taren- fcm, as being in Italy (i, 24 ; iii, 136; iv, 15). I notice this discrepancy of geographical speech, between the two con-