Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/45

ISLAND OF THASUS. 27 prised to hear that their clear surplus revenue before the Persian conquest, about 493 B.C., after defraying the charges of their government without any taxation, amounted to the large sum of two hundred talents, sometimes even to three hundred talents, in each year (from forty-six thousand to sixty-six thousand pounds). On the long peninsula called the Thracian Chersonese there may probably have been small Grecian settlements at an early date, though we do not know at what time either the Milesian settlement of Kardia, on the western side of the isthmus of that peninsula, near the .^Egean sea, or the JEolic colony of Sestus on the Hellespont, were founded; while the Athenian ascendency in the peninsula begins only with the migration of the first Milti- ades, during the reign of Peisistratus at Athens. The Samian colony of Perinthus, on the northern coast of the Propontis, 1 is spoken of as ancient in date, and the Megarian colonies, Selym- bria and Byzantium, belong to the seventh century B. c. : the latter of these two is assigned to the 30th Olympiad (G57 B.C.), and its neighbor Chalkedon, on the opposite coast, was a few years earlier. The site of Byzantium in the narrow strait of the Bosphorus, with its abundant thunny-fishery, 2 which both employed and nourished a large proportion of the poorer freemen, was alike convenient either for maritime traffic, or for levying contributions on the numerous corn ships which passed from the Euxine into the -(Egean ; and we are even told that it held a considerable number of the neighboring Bithynian Thracians as tributary Periceki. Such dominion, though probably main- tained during the more vigorous period of Grecian city life, became in later times impracticable, and we even find the Byzan- tines not always competent to the defence of their own small surrounding territory. The place, however, will be found to possess considerable importance during all the period of this history. 3 The Grecian settlements on the inhospitable south-western coast of the Euxine, south of the Danube, appear never to have 1 Skymnus Chius, 699-715; Plutarch, Quoest. Grsec. c. 57. See M. Raoul Eochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecquea chs. xi-xiv, vol. iii, pp. 273-298 1 Aristot. Polit. iv, 4, 1. ' Tolyb. iv, 39 ^Thylarch. Fragm. 10,