The League of the Achaen Cities

Of all the Greek settlements, that which retained most thoroughly its distinctive character and was least affected by influences from without was the settlement which gave birth to the league of the Achaean cities, composed of the towns of Siris, Pandosia, Metabus or Metapontum, Sybaris with its offsets Posidonia and Laus, Croton, Caulonia, Temesa, Terina, and Pyxus.  These colonists, taken as a whole, belonged to a Greek stock which steadfastly adhered to its own peculiar dialect, having closest affinity with the Doric, and for long retained no less steadfastly the old national Hellenic mode of writing, instead of adopting the more recent alphabet which had elsewhere come into general use; and which preserved its own nationality, as distinguished alike from the barbarians and from other Greeks, by the firm bond of a federal constitution.  The language of Polybius regarding the Achaean symmachy in the Peloponnesus may be applied also to these Italian Achaeans; “Not only did they live in federal and friendly communion, but they made use of like laws, like weights, measures, and coins, as well as of the same magistrates, councillors, and judges.”

This league of the Achaean cities was strictly a colonization.  The cities had no harbours—­Croton alone had a paltry roadstead—­and they had no commerce of their own; the Sybarite prided himself on growing gray between the bridges of his lagoon-city, and Milesians and Etruscans bought and sold for him.  These Achaean Greeks, however, were not merely in possession of a narrow belt along the coast, but ruled from sea to sea in the “land of wine” and “of oxen” (—­Oinotria—­, —­Italia—­) or the “great Hellas;” the native agricultural population was compelled to farm their lands and to pay to them tribute in the character of clients or even of serfs.  Sybaris—­in its time the largest city in Italy—­exercised dominion over four barbarian tribes and five-and-twenty townships, and was able to found Laus and Posidonia on the other sea.  The exceedingly fertile low grounds of the Crathis and Bradanus yielded a superabundant produce to the Sybarites and Metapontines—­it was there perhaps that grain was first cultivated for exportation.  The height of prosperity which these states in an incredibly short time attained is strikingly attested by the only surviving works of art of these Italian Achaeans, their coins of chaste antiquely beautiful workmanship—­the earliest monuments of art and writing in Italy which we possess, as it can be shown that they had already begun to be coined in 174.  These coins show that the Achaeans of the west did not simply participate in the noble development of plastic art that was at this very time taking place in the motherland, but were even superior in technical skill.  For, while the silver pieces which were in use about that time in Greece proper and among the Dorians in Italy were thick, often stamped only on