descended from their inland mountains to the seaboard, and they always kept aloof from maritime commerce.  The different groups of immigrants are very clearly distinguishable, especially by their monetary standards.  The Phocaean settlers coined according to the Babylonian standard which prevailed in Asia.  The Chalcidian towns followed in the earliest times the Aeginetan, in other words, that which originally prevailed throughout all European Greece, and more especially the modification of it which is found occurring in Euboea.  The Achaean communities coined by the Corinthian standard; and lastly the Doric colonies followed that which Solon introduced in Attica in the year of Rome 160, with the exception of Tarentum and Heraclea, which in their principal pieces adopted rather the standard of their Achaean neighbours than that of the Dorians in Sicily.

Time of the Greek Immigration

The dates of the earlier voyages and settlements will probably always remain enveloped in darkness.  We may still, however, distinctly recognize a certain order of sequence.  In the oldest Greek document, which belongs, like the earliest intercourse with the west, to the lonians of Asia Minor—­the Homeric poems—­the horizon scarcely extends beyond the eastern basin of the Mediterranean.  Sailors driven by storms into the western sea might have brought to Asia Minor accounts of the existence of a western land and possibly also of its whirlpools and island-mountains vomiting fire:  but in the age of the Homeric poetry there was an utter want of trustworthy information respecting Sicily and Italy, even in that Greek land which was the earliest to enter into intercourse with the west; and the story-tellers and poets of the east could without fear of contradiction fill the vacant realms of the west, as those of the west in their turn filled the fabulous east, with their castles in the air.  In the poems of Hesiod the outlines of Italy and Sicily appear better defined; there is some acquaintance with the native names of tribes, mountains, and cities in both countries; but Italy is still regarded as a group of islands.  On the other hand, in all the literature subsequent to Hesiod, Sicily and even the whole coast of Italy appear as known, at least in a general sense, to the Hellenes.  The order of succession of the Greek settlements may in like manner be ascertained with some degree of precision.  Thucydides evidently regarded Cumae as the earliest settlement of note in the west; and certainly he was not mistaken.  It is true that many a landing-place lay nearer at hand for the Greek mariner, but none were so well protected from storms and from barbarians as the island of Ischia, upon which the town was originally situated; and that such were the prevailing considerations that led to this settlement, is evident from the very position which was subsequently selected for it on the mainland—­the steep but well-protected cliff, which still bears