III.] COLONIES IN SICILY. 53
that of Sybaris that the first Greek emigrants were despatched
to Sicily. Almost simultaneously the lonians and
the Dorians sent out colonies to that country. In Sici°iy*ie8 in
735 B.C. the city of Naxos was founded by the
Chalcidians at the north-eastern base of Etna, at the foot of the
hill where Tauromenium (Taormina) was afterwards Naxos
built; and the following year saw the establishment 735B.C.'
of Syracuse by the Corinthians on the island of Syracuse,
Ortygia further toward the south. The latter place 734 B>c*
was an admirable trading station, owing to its wonderful
harbour, which received the waters of the river Anapus; and
Ortygia itself, by reason of its nearness to the shore, from which
it was separated only by a narrow channel, had all the advan-
tages both of an island and a peninsula. These early colonies,
and also that of Megara Hyblaea, which was founded shortly
after them by the Megarians of Greece Proper, were settled on
the eastern coast, as indeed was natural, since that side of Sicily
was the nearest to the Greek seas; and there conditions were
met with equally favourable with those presented by Southern
Italy, for the soil was remarkably productive, and the Sicels,
who inhabited that part of the island, were of the same stock
as the Oenotrians, and, like them, yielded themselves readily
to Greek influences. Hence they soon rose to prosperity, as
was proved by several towns being established by them in the
neighbouring districts—Catana and Leontini by Naxos, and
Acrae and Casmenae by Syracuse. Yet a long interval of time
elapsed before they attempted to occupy positions on the
southern coast, so that Camarina, the first colony that was
founded by Syracuse in that direction, was 133 years later in
date than its parent city. The cause of this delay is to be
sought, partly in the remoteness of that seaboard—for the pro-
montory of Pachynus appears at first to have inspired the Sicilian
Greeks with the same dread which their forefathers had felt for
Malea—and partly in the warlike character of its occupants.
The Sicanians, who inhabited the western part of Sicily—a race,
according to Thucydides1, of Iberian extraction, but unquestionably
earlier as immigrants than the Sicels—were a hardy and stubborn
1 Thuc. 6. a.