them.[1] It is difficult to say how far this hellenization went. Perhaps to the end, till all were swamped in a common Italian nationality and language (if indeed Sicily even now can be called Italian), there were remote inland districts where the inhabitants had remained free from Greek influence. But of these history knows nothing. From a time long before Christianity the Sicily and Southern Italy we know were Greek; Greek is the language of these parts, at least as far as our records tell us anything; the people looked to Rome and the north of the peninsula as foreign countries, and to the Athenians, Spartans, and later the Byzantines as their fellow-countrymen.
Nor is there anything surprising in this from the point of view of geography: We are so accustomed to look on Italy as one land that perhaps we forget what any map of Europe will show — namely, how near the south of Italy is to the Greek lands across the water. The cities of the east coast of Italy, at any rate, are much nearer to Macedonia and Epirus than they are to Rome. Greeks from Hellas could come to these parts sooner and more easily than they could go to Crete; Sicily is nearer to Athens than is Cyprus. Indeed, Magna Græcia and Sicily were just as really parts of Hellas as Attica and the Peloponnesus. For at no time was Greece united as one political state till Alexander united it, with Asia and Egypt, in his great empire. What joined Greeks together was their blood; or, since blood is a difficult factor to estimate, their language, religion, civilization. In this Magna Græcia had the same share as the other Greek states. There was no bond between Athens and Sparta which did not equally bind Athens to Syracuse.
Many of the Greek writers and heroes we remember were Greeks of Italy or Sicily. Pythagoras, though a Samian by birth, lived in Calabria; Empedocles, Theocritus, Archimedes were Sicilians. When the Athenians besieged Syracuse, it was not a war of Greek against foreigners — Greeks fought Greeks. There were indeed foreigners in Sicily: the Carthaginians, who also had their colonies to the west of the island. With these the Greeks fought with varying success, till the Romans came and conquered both. Otherwise we must conceive Magna Græcia and Sicily as Greek lands; the Greek element in them is the first in our period. It remains the original element till far into the Middle Ages. But into these Greek lands came a series of invaders of different races. The Romans, Lombards, Saracens, Normans, in turn brought their
- ↑ Diodorus Siculus, "Hist.," Bk. v, ch. vi ("Scrip. Gr. et Rom.," Teubner, vol. ii, pp. 11-12).
