Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/416

400 HISTORY OF GREECE. during this early period of prosperity, except that we find men- tion at Kroton, as at the Epizcphyrian Lokri, of a senate of one thousand members, yet not excluding occasionally the ekklesia, or general assembly. 1 Probably, the steady increase of their domin- ion in the interior, and the facility of providing maintenance for new population, tended much to make their political systems, Avhatever they may have been, work in a satisfactory manner. The attempt of Pythagoras and his followers to constitute them- selves a ruling faction as well as a philosophical sect, will be re- counted in a subsequent chapter. The proceedings connected with that attempt will show that there was considerable analogy and sympathy between the various cities of Italian Greece, so as to render them liable to be acted on by the same causes. But though the festivals of the Lakinian Here, administered by the Krotoniates, formed from early times a common point of religious assemblage to all, 2 yet the attempts to institute periodical meet- ings of deputies, for the express purpose of maintaining political harmony, did not begin until after the destruction of Sybaris, nor were they ever more than partially successful. One other city, the most distant colony founded by Greeks in the western regions, yet remains to be mentioned ; and we can do no more than mention it, since we have no facts to make up its history. Massalia, the modern Marseilles, was founded by the Ionic Phokzeans in the 45th Olympiad, about 597 B. c.? at the time when Sybaris and Kroton were near the maximum of their power, when the peninsula of Calabria was all Hellenic, and when Cumse also had not yet been visited by those calamities which brought about its decline. So much Hellenism in the south of Italy doubtless facilitated the western progress of the 1 Jamblichus, Vit. Pythagor. c. 9, p. 33 ; c. 35, p. 210. 2 Athenams, xii, 541. 3 This date depends upon Timseus (as quoted by Skymnus Cliius, 210) and Solinus ; there seems no reason for distrusting it, though Thticydides (i, 13) and Isokrates (Archidamus, p. 316) seem to conceive Massalia as founded by the Phokacans about 60 years later, when Ionia was cr nqucred by Harpagus (see Bruckner, Historia Reip. Massiliensium, sect. 2, p. 9, Rnoul Bochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecqucs, vol. iii, pp. 405-413, who, how- ever, puts the arrival of the Phokaeans, in these regions and at Tarteasw much too early).