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HELLENIC CITIES. 453 CHAPTER XCVIII. OUTj.YING HELLENIC CITIES. 1 IN GAUL AND SPAIN. 2 ON THE COAST OF THE EUXINE To *>wraplete the picture of the Hellenic world while -yei m its period of full life, in freedom and self-action, or even during its decline into the half-life of a dependent condition — we must say a few words respecting some of its members lying apart from the general history, yet of not inconsiderable importance. The Gl^reeks of Massalia fonned its western wing ; the Pontic Greeks (those on the shores of the Euxine), its eastern ; both of them the outermost radiations of Hellenism, where it was always mili- tant against foreign elements, and often adulterated by them. It is indeed little that we have the means of saying ; but that little must not be left unsaid. In my third volume (ch. xxii. p. 397), I briefly noticed the foundation and first proceedings of Massalia (the modem Mar- seilles), on the Mediterranean coast of Gaul or Liguria. This Ionic city, founded by the enterprising Phokasans of Asia Minor, a little before their own seaboard was subjugated by the Per- sians, had a life and career of its own, apart from those political events Avhich determined the condition of its Hellenic sisters in Asia, Peloponnesus, Italy, or Sicily. The Massaliots maintained their own relations of commerce, friendship or hostility with their barbaric neighbors, the Ligurians, Gauls, and Iberians, without becoming involved in the larger political confedei-acies of the Hellenic world. They carried out from their mother-city established habits of adventurous coast navigation and commer- cial activity. Their situation, distant from other Greeks and sustained by a force hardly sufficient even for defence, imposed