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I can see them still, the two boys, their grave demeanour belied by mobile lips and mischievous fair curls of Northern ancestry; the other, leaning forward intent upon the music, and caressing his moustache with bent fingers upon which glittered a jewel set in massive gold some scarab or intaglio, the spoil of old Magna Graecia.
Thus the Campanian Greeks, particularly Neapolis, courageously withstood the attack of Hannibal in person: in Magna Graecia Rhegium, Thurii, Metapontum, and Tarentum did the same notwithstanding their very perilous position.
Tarentum was a colony from Sparta and was founded about B.C. 708. After the destruction of Sybaris it was the most powerful and flourishing city in Magna Graecia, and continued to enjoy great prosperity till its subjugation by the Romans. Although of Spartan origin, it did not maintain Spartan habits, and its citizens were noted at a later time for their love of luxury and pleasure.
Pythagoras probably does not yield to any one of these in the evidences of true intellectual greatness. In his school, in the followers he trained resembling himself, and in the salutary effects he produced on the institutions of the various republics of Magna Graecia and Sicily, he must be allowed greatly to have excelled them.
Water, indeed, is one of the glories of the Sila everywhere it bubbles forth in chill rivulets among the stones and trickles down the hill-sides to join the larger streams that wend their way to the forlorn and fever-stricken coastlands of Magna Graecia.
There the young daughter of Cyprus grew up and became acquainted with the world, seeking each night some wheat merchant from Bithynia, or some exporter of hides from Magna Graecia, rude and merry people, who, before returning to their native lands wished to spend some of their earnings on the courtesans of Athens.
Thus the Campanian Greeks, particularly Neapolis, courageously withstood the attack of Hannibal in person: in Magna Graecia Rhegium, Thurii, Metapontum, and Tarentum did the same notwithstanding their very perilous position.
At an early period the shores of Southern Italy and Sicily were peopled by Greeks; and so numerous and powerful did the Grecian cities become that the whole were comprised by Strabo and others under the appellation Magna Graecia, or Great Greece.
At the sign of "Magna Graecia" one is willing to accept "hydroelectropathic" as a late echo of Hellenic speech. Taranto has a very interesting Museum. I went there with an introduction to the curator, who spared no trouble in pointing out to me all that was best worth seeing.
What splendid developments might have followed if the finer spirits of the Renaissance, Alberti, Bramante, or Peruzzi, had founded their theories of architecture on the temples of Sicily and Magna Graecia, instead of on the debased examples of Imperial Rome!
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