Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/503

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CHAP. XIII.]
THE TRADE-ROUTE FROM MASSILIA.
475

Danube through the mountains to the north of Greece, as well as by way of Olbia and Hatria. The coins of Philip of Macedon have been found in Germany, and those of Massilia at Roveredo on Route I. It is very likely that some of the beautiful designs so conspicuous in the arms and ornaments of the Bronze age in Scandinavia, which up to the present time have not been traced farther south than the Valley of the Danube, may have been derived from Greece. It must be borne in mind that just as amber from the north was distributed through Italy and Greece, so in return were bronze articles and glass beads exported to the regions of the north. The influence, however, of Greece and of Greek art seems to me altogether secondary in importance to that of the Etruskans, who carried on trade with the north most likely for many centuries before the Greeks of Pontus found their way to the shores of the Baltic.

The Trade-Route from Massilia.

In the seventh century before Christ the Greek sailors appeared in the western Mediterranean to dispute the supremacy of the seas with the Phœnicians and Etruskans. Kolaios,[1] a native of Samos, was driven by a storm in B.C. 640 out of his course beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and was the first of all the Greeks to reach Gades or Tartessus; and about one hundred years later the Phocæans, fleeing from the tyranny of Cyrus, founded the city of Massilia at the mouth of the Rhone, which rapidly became an important place of commerce, and exerted a great influence on the civilisation of Gaul and of Britain. They introduced the Greek language and

  1. Strabo, iv. 150.