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This change was brought about, as in Macedonia and Epirus, not by colonization, but by civilization, which seems to have gone hand in hand with the land commerce of Tarentum; at least that hypothesis is favoured by the facts, that the districts of the Poediculi and Daunii who were on friendly terms with the Tarentines carried out their Hellenization more completely than the Sallentines who lived nearer to Tarentum but were constantly at feud with it, and that the towns that were soonest Graecized, such as Arpi, were not situated on the coast.
As the striking of Etruscan silver money after an Attic standard and the penetrating of Italian and especially of Latin copper into Sicily testify to the two former routes of traffic, so the equivalence, which we have just mentioned, between the silver money of Magna Graecia and the copper coinage of Picenum and Apulia, forms, with numerous other indications, an evidence of the active traffic which the Greeks of Lower Italy, the Tarentines in particular, held with the east Italian seaboard.
Then he placed a garrison in Tarentum, much to the Tarentines' discontent, who required him either to perform what he came for, and continue with them in a war against the Romans, or leave the city as he found it. He returned no pleasing answer, but commanded them to be quiet and attend his time, and so sailed away.
Alexander had at first the advantage; he wrested Heraclea from the Tarentines, restored Thurii, and seems to have called upon the other Italian Greeks to unite under his protection against the Tarentines, while he at the same time tried to bring about a peace between them and the Sabellian tribes.
And in another passage quoted by Cicero, he professes to desire that his readers may be the Tarentines, Consentines, and Sicilians, those, that is, whose Latin grammar and spelling most needed improvement. But we cannot extend this humility to his more famous political allusions.
This stopped the course of the barbarians, amazed and confounded at Pyrrhus, as one more than man; so that continuing his march all the rest of the way undisturbed, he arrived at Tarentum with twenty thousand foot and three thousand horse, where, reinforcing himself with the choicest troops of the Tarentines, he advanced immediately against the Romans, who then lay encamped in the territories of the Samnites, whose affairs were extremely shattered, and their counsels broken, having been in many fights beaten by the Romans.
It was not from magnanimity in the conquerors for the Romans knew nothing of the sort but from shrewd and far-seeing calculation that terms so moderate were granted to the Samnites, the Tarentines, and the more distant peoples generally.
These circumstances, and the train of events to which they led, will form the subject of the following chapter. The grand expedition into Italy. The dominion of the Romans. The Tarentines. Various parties formed at Tarentum. Boisterous meetings. Meton's artifice. Meton succeeds in accomplishing his aim. Pyrrhus is invited to come to Tarentum. Great numbers of volunteers. Cineas.
An exile from Tarentum, named Gillis, paid their ransom, and took them to Susa, for which service Darius offered him any reward he chose to ask. Like Democedes, all he wanted was to go home. But this reward he did not obtain. Darius brought to bear on Tarentum all the influence he could wield, but in vain. The Tarentines were obdurate, and would not have their exile back again.
The real explanation of this fable seems to lie in the extremely excitable nature of the Tarentines themselves, assisted by the exhilarating music and by frequent pulls at the wine barrel. The two lines sung to the air of one of the tunes employed: “Non fu Taranta, ne fu Tarantella, Ma fu la vino della carratella:”
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