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William Hope Hodgson - "The Boats of the Glen Carrig"

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REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Publishers Newswire, an online resource for small publishers, as well as lesser known and first-time book authors, has announced its latest quarterly 'Books to Bookmark' list, for Q4/2008. This list is a round-up of new and interesting books which are often missed due to not originating from big name authors, or major New York book publishing houses.

Book, 'Letters From Heroes', captures triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and II
GILROY, Calif. -- The hardships, struggles, hopes and triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and World War II is wonderfully captured in 'Letters From Heroes' (ISBN: 978-1-58909-570-0), by Edward T. Cook, a new book just published by Bookstand Publishing. This poignant collection of real letters from real servicemen allow the reader to see things through the eyes of these soldiers and understand their thoughts about war, training, sickness, the enemy and even their food.

In New Book, Mystery of the 6,000 Year Old Science and Art of Astrology Has Been Solved
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Author of the new book, ASTROMASKS (ISBN: 978-0-615-23386-4), Vijay Rishii Ph.D., announced today that his book reveals the secret code behind the ancient and controversial science of astrology. The author decodes astrology using a new concept of complementary pairs, and gives new meanings to the zodiac signs and their real connection to humans on earth, which has never been done before in the entire history of astrology.

The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)


Greek Cities Near Vesuvius


While the most easterly of the Greek settlements in Italy thus rapidly
rose into splendour, those which lay furthest to the north, in the
neighbourhood of Vesuvius, attained a more moderate prosperity.
There the Cumaeans had crossed from the fertile island of Aenaria
(Ischia) to the mainland, and had built a second home on a hill
close by the sea, from whence they founded the seaport of Dicaearchia
(afterwards Puteoli) and, moreover, the "new city" Neapolis. They
lived, like the Chalcidian cities generally in Italy and Sicily,
in conformity with the laws which Charondas of Catana (about 100)
had established, under a constitution democratic but modified by
a high census, which placed the power in the hands of a council
of members selected from the wealthiest men--a constitution which
proved lasting and kept these cities free, upon the whole, from
the tyranny alike of usurpers and of the mob. We know little as to
the external relations of these Campanian Greeks. They remained,
whether from necessity or from choice, confined to a district of
even narrower limits than the Tarentines; and issuing from it not
for purposes of conquest and oppression, but for the holding of
peaceful commercial intercourse with the natives, they created the
means of a prosperous existence for themselves, and at the same time
took the foremost place among the missionaries of Greek civilization
in Italy.


Relations of the Adriatic Regions to the Greeks


While on the one side of the straits of Rhegium the whole southern
coast of the mainland and its western coast as far as Vesuvius,
and on the other the larger eastern half of the island of Sicily,
were Greek territory, the west coast of Italy northward of Vesuvius
and the whole of the east coast were in a position essentially
different. No Greek settlements arose on the Italian seaboard of
the Adriatic; and with this we may evidently connect the comparatively
small number and subordinate importance of the Greek colonies
planted on the opposite Illyrian shore and on the numerous adjacent
islands. Two considerable mercantile towns, Epidamnus or Dyrrachium
(now Durazzo, 127), and Apollonia (near Avlona, about 167), were
founded upon the portion of this coast nearest to Greece during
the regal period of Rome; but no old Greek colony can be pointed
out further to the north, with the exception perhaps of the
insignificant settlement at Black Corcyra (Curzola, about 174?). No
adequate explanation has yet been given why the Greek colonization
developed itself in this direction to so meagre an extent. Nature
herself appeared to direct the Hellenes thither, and in fact from
the earliest times there existed a regular traffic to that region
from Corinth and still more from the settlement at Corcyra (Corfu)
founded not long after Rome (about 44); a traffic, which had as its
emporia on the Italian coast the towns of Spina and Atria, situated
at the mouth of the Po. The storms of the Adriatic, the inhospitable
character at least of the Illyrian coasts, and the barbarism of
the natives are manifestly not in themselves sufficient to explain
this fact. But it was a circumstance fraught with the most momentous
consequences for Italy, that the elements of civilization which
came from the east did not exert their influence on its eastern
provinces directly, but reached them only through the medium of those
that lay to the west. The Adriatic commerce carried on by Corinth
and Corcyra was shared by the most easterly mercantile city of
Magna Graecia, the Doric Tarentum, which by the possession of Hydrus
(Otranto) had the command, on the Italian side, of the entrance of
the Adriatic. Since, with the exception of the ports at the mouth
of the Po, there were in those times no emporia worthy of mention
along the whole east coast--the rise of Ancona belongs to a far
later period, and later still the rise of Brundisium--it may well
be conceived that the mariners of Epidamnus and Apollonia frequently
discharged their cargoes at Tarentum. The Tarentines had also much
intercourse with Apulia by land; all the Greek civilization to be
met with in the south-east of Italy owed its existence to them.
That civilization, however, was during the present period only in
its infancy; it was not until a later epoch that the Hellenism of
Apulia was developed.


Relations of the Western Italians to the Greeks


It cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that the west coast
of Italy northward of Vesuvius was frequented in very early times
by the Hellenes, and that there were Hellenic factories on its
promontories and islands. Probably the earliest evidence of such
voyages is the localizing of the legend of Odysseus on the coasts
of the Tyrrhene Sea.(4) When men discovered the isles of Aeolus
in the Lipari islands, when they pointed out at the Lacinian cape
the isle of Calypso, at the cape of Misenum that of the Sirens,
at the cape of Circeii that of Circe, when they recognized in the
steep promontory of Terracina the towering burial-mound of Elpenor,
when the Laestrygones were provided with haunts near Caieta and
Formiae, when the two sons of Ulysses and Circe, Agrius, that is
the "wild," and Latinus, were made to rule over the Tyrrhenians in
the "inmost recess of the holy islands," or, according to a more
recent version, Latinus was called the son of Ulysses and Circe,
and Auson the son of Ulysses and Calypso--we recognize in these
legends ancient sailors' tales of the seafarers of Ionia, who
thought of their native home as they traversed the Tyrrhene Sea.
The same noble vividness of feeling, which pervades the Ionic poem
of the voyages of Odysseus, is discernible in this fresh localization
of the same legend at Cumae itself and throughout the regions
frequented by the Cumaean mariners.

Other traces of these very ancient voyages are to be found in the
Greek name of the island Aethalia (Ilva, Elba), which appears to
have been (after Aenaria) one of the places earliest occupied by
Greeks, perhaps also in that of the seaport Telamon in Etruria;
and further in the two townships on the Caerite coast, Pyrgi (near
S. Severa) and Alsium (near Palo), the Greek origin of which is
indicated beyond possibility of mistake not only by their names,
but also by the peculiar architecture of the walls of Pyrgi, which
differs essentially in character from that of the walls of Caere
and the Etruscan cities generally. Aethalia, the "fire-island,"
with its rich mines of copper and especially of iron, probably
sustained the chief part in this commerce, and there in all likelihood
the foreigners had their central settlement and seat of traffic
with the natives; the more especially as they could not have found
the means of smelting the ores on the small and not well-wooded
island without intercourse with the mainland. The silver mines
of Populonia also on the headland opposite to Elba were perhaps
already known to the Greeks and wrought by them.

If, as was undoubtedly the case, the foreigners, ever in those times
intent on piracy and plunder as well as trade, did not fail, when
opportunity offered, to levy contributions on the natives and to
carry them off as slaves, the natives on their part exercised the
right of retaliation; and that the Latins and Tyrrhenes retaliated
with greater energy and better fortune than their neighbours in
the south of Italy, is attested not merely by the legends to that
effect, but by the actual results. In these regions the Italians
succeeded in resisting the foreigners and in retaining, or at any
rate soon resuming, the mastery not merely of their own mercantile
cities and mercantile ports, but also of their own sea. The same
Hellenic invasion which crushed and denationalized the races of
the south of Italy, directed the energies of the peoples of Central
Italy--very much indeed against the will of their instructors--towards
navigation and the founding of towns. It must have been in this
quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for
the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks. Here too we first
encounter great mercantile cities, particularly Caere in southern
Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from their
Italian names as well as from their being situated at some distance
from the sea, were--like the exactly similar commercial towns at
the mouth of the Po, Spina and Atria, and Ariminum further to the
south--certainly not Greek, but Italian foundations. It is not
in our power, as may easily be supposed, to exhibit the historical
course of this earliest reaction of Italian nationality against
foreign aggression; but we can still recognize the fact, which was
of the greatest importance as bearing upon the further development
of Italy, that this reaction took a different course in Latium and
in southern Etruria from that which it exhibited in the properly
Tuscan and adjoining provinces.


Hellenes and Latins


Legend itself contrasts in a significant manner the Latin with
the "wild Tyrrhenian," and the peaceful beach at the mouth of the
Tiber with the inhospitable shore of the Volsci. This cannot mean
that Greek colonization was tolerated in some of the provinces of
Central Italy, but not permitted in others. Northward of Vesuvius
there existed no independent Greek community at all in historical
times; if Pyrgi once was such, it must have already reverted,
before the period at which our tradition begins, into the hands of
the Italians or in other words of the Caerites. But in southern
Etruria, in Latium, and likewise on the east coast, peaceful intercourse
with the foreign merchants was protected and encouraged; and such
was not the case elsewhere. The position of Caere was especially
remarkable. "The Caerites," says Strabo, "were held in much repute
among the Hellenes for their bravery and integrity, and because,
powerful though they were, they abstained from robbery." It is
not piracy that is thus referred to, for in this the merchant of
Caere must have indulged like every other. But Caere was a sort
of free port for Phoenicians as well as Greeks. We have already
mentioned the Phoenician station--subsequently called Punicum--and
the two Hellenic stations of Pyrgi and Alsium.(5) It was these
ports that the Caerites refrained from robbing, and it was beyond
doubt through this tolerant attitude that Caere, which possessed
but a wretched roadstead and had no mines in its neighbourhood,
early attained so great prosperity and acquired, in reference to
the earliest Greek commerce, an importance even greater than the
cities of the Italians destined by nature as emporia at the mouths
of the Tiber and Po. The cities we have just named are those which
appear as holding primitive religious intercourse with Greece. The
first of all barbarians to present gifts to the Olympian Zeus was
the Tuscan king Arimnus, perhaps a ruler of Ariminum. Spina and
Caere had their special treasuries in the temple of the Delphic
Apollo, like other communities that had regular dealings with the
shrine; and the sanctuary at Delphi, as well as the Cumaean oracle,
is interwoven with the earliest traditions of Caere and of Rome.
These cities, where the Italians held peaceful sway and carried
on friendly traffic with the foreign merchant, became preeminently
wealthy and powerful, and were genuine marts not only for Hellenic
merchandise, but also for the germs of Hellenic civilization.


Hellenes and Etruscans--Etruscan Maritime Power


Matters stood on a different footing with the "wild Tyrrhenians."
The same causes, which in the province of Latium, and in the districts
on the right bank of the Tiber and along the lower course of the
Po that were perhaps rather subject to Etruscan supremacy than
strictly Etruscan, had led to the emancipation of the natives
from the maritime power of the foreigner, led in Etruria proper to
the development of piracy and maritime ascendency, in consequence
possibly of the difference of national character disposing the people
to violence and pillage, or it may be for other reasons with which
we are not acquainted. The Etruscans were not content with dislodging
the Greeks from Aethalia and Populonia; even the individual trader
was apparently not tolerated by them, and soon Etruscan privateers
roamed over the sea far and wide, and rendered the name of the
Tyrrhenians a terror to the Greeks. It was not without reason that
the Greeks reckoned the grapnel as an Etruscan invention, and called
the western sea of Italy the sea of the Tuscans. The rapidity
with which these wild corsairs multiplied and the violence of their
proceedings in the Tyrrhene Sea in particular, are very clearly
shown by their establishment on the Latin and Campanian coasts.
The Latins indeed maintained their ground in Latium proper, and
the Greeks at Vesuvius; but between them and by their side the
Etruscans held sway in Antium and in Surrentum. The Volscians became
clients of the Etruscans; their forests contributed the keels for
the Etruscan galleys; and seeing that the piracy of the Antiates was
only terminated by the Roman occupation, it is easy to understand
why the coast of the southern Volscians bore among Greek mariners
the name of the Laestrygones. The high promontory of Sorrento with
the cliff of Capri which is still more precipitous but destitute
of any harbour--a station thoroughly adapted for corsairs on the
watch, commanding a prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea between the bays
of Naples and Salerno--was early occupied by the Etruscans. They are
affirmed even to have founded a "league of twelve towns" of their
own in Campania, and communities speaking Etruscan still existed in
its inland districts in times quite historical. These settlements
were probably indirect results of the maritime dominion of
the Etruscans in the Campanian sea, and of their rivalry with the
Cumaeans at Vesuvius.


Etruscan Commerce


The Etruscans however by no means confined themselves to robbery
and pillage. The peaceful intercourse which they held with Greek
towns is attested by the gold and silver coins which, at least from
the year 200, were struck by the Etruscan cities, and in particular
by Populonia, after a Greek model and a Greek standard. The
circumstance, moreover, that these coins are modelled not upon
those of Magna Graecia, but rather upon those of Attica and even
Asia Minor, is perhaps an indication of the hostile attitude in
which the Etruscans stood towards the Italian Greeks. For commerce
they in fact enjoyed the most favourable position, far more
advantageous than that of the inhabitants of Latium. Inhabiting
the country from sea to sea, they commanded the great Italian free
ports on the western waters, the mouths of the Po and the Venice
of that time on the eastern sea, and the land route which from
ancient times led from Pisa on the Tyrrhene Sea to Spina on the
Adriatic, while in the south of Italy they commanded the rich plains
of Capua and Nola. They were the holders of the most important
Italian articles of export, the iron of Aethalia, the copper
of Volaterrae and Campania, the silver of Populonia, and even the
amber which was brought to them from the Baltic.(6) Under the
protection of their piracy, which constituted as it were a rude
navigation act, their own commerce could not fail to flourish.
It need not surprise us to find Etruscan and Milesian merchants
competing in the market of Sybaris, nor need we be astonished to
learn that the combination of privateering and commerce on a great
scale generated the unbounded and senseless luxury, in which the
vigour of Etruria early wasted away.


Rivalry between the Phoenicians and Hellenes


While in Italy the Etruscans and, although in a lesser degree, the
Latins thus stood opposed to the Hellenes, warding them off and
partly treating them as enemies, this antagonism to some extent
necessarily affected the rivalry which then above all dominated the
commerce and navigation of the Mediterranean--the rivalry between
the Phoenicians and Hellenes. This is not the place to set forth
in detail how, during the regal period of Rome, these two great nations
contended for supremacy on all the shores of the Mediterranean, in
Greece even and Asia Minor, in Crete and Cyprus, on the African,
Spanish, and Celtic coasts. This struggle did not take place directly
on Italian soil, but its effects were deeply and permanently felt
in Italy. The fresh energies and more universal endowments of
the younger competitor had at first the advantage everywhere. Not
only did the Hellenes rid themselves of the Phoenician factories
in their own European and Asiatic homes, but they dislodged the
Phoenicians also from Crete and Cyprus, gained a footing in Egypt
and Cyrene, and possessed themselves of Lower Italy and the larger
eastern half of the island of Sicily. On all hands the small trading
stations of the Phoenicians gave way before the more energetic
colonization of the Greeks. Selinus (126) and Agrigentum (174)
were founded in western Sicily; the more remote western sea was
traversed, Massilia was built on the Celtic coast (about 150), and
the shores of Spain were explored, by the bold Phocaeans from Asia
Minor. But about the middle of the second century the progress of
Hellenic colonization was suddenly arrested; and there is no doubt
that the cause of this arrest was the contemporary rapid rise of
Carthage, the most powerful of the Phoenician cities in Libya--a
rise manifestly due to the danger with which Hellenic aggression
threatened the whole Phoenician race. If the nation which had
opened up maritime commerce on the Mediterranean had been already
dislodged by its younger rival from the sole command of the western
half, from the possession of both lines of communication between
the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean, and from the
monopoly of the carrying trade between east and west, the sovereignty
at least of the seas to the west of Sardinia and Sicily might
still be saved for the Orientals; and to its maintenance Carthage
applied all the tenacious and circumspect energy peculiar to the
Aramaean race. Phoenician colonization and Phoenician resistance
assumed an entirely different character. The earlier Phoenician
settlements, such as those in Sicily described by Thucydides, were
mercantile factories: Carthage subdued extensive territories with
numerous subjects and powerful fortresses. Hitherto the Phoenician
settlements had stood isolated in opposition to the Greeks; now
the powerful Libyan city centralized within its sphere the whole
warlike resources of those akin to it in race with a vigour to
which the history of the Greeks can produce nothing parallel.


Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes


Perhaps the element in this reaction which exercised the most
momentous influence in the sequel was the close relation into which
the weaker Phoenicians entered with the natives of Sicily and Italy
in order to resist the Hellenes. When the Cnidians and Rhodians
made an attempt about 175 to establish themselves at Lilybaeum, the
centre of the Phoenician settlements in Sicily, they were expelled
by the natives--the Elymi of Segeste--in concert with the Phoenicians.
When the Phocaeans settled about 217 at Alalia (Aleria) in Corsica
opposite to Caere, there appeared for the purpose of expelling
them a combined fleet of Etruscans and Carthaginians, numbering
a hundred and twenty sail; and although in the naval battle that
ensued--one of the earliest known in history-the fleet of the
Phocaeans, which was only half as strong, claimed the victory, the
Carthaginians and Etruscans gained the object which they had in
view in the attack; the Phocaeans abandoned Corsica, and preferred
to settle at Hyde (Velia) on the less exposed coast of Lucania. A
treaty between Etruria and Carthage not only established regulations
regarding the import of goods and the giving due effect to rights,
but included also an alliance-in-arms (--summachia--), the serious
import of which is shown by that very battle of Alalia. It is a
significant indication of the position of the Caerites, that they
stoned the Phocaean captives in the market at Caere and then sent
an embassy to the Delphic Apollo to atone for the crime.

Latium did not join in these hostilities against the Hellenes; on
the contrary, we find friendly relations subsisting in very ancient
times between the Romans and the Phocaeans in Velia as well as in
Massilia, and the Ardeates are even said to have founded in concert
with the Zacynthians a colony in Spain, the later Saguntum. Much
less, however, did the Latins range themselves on the side of
the Hellenes: the neutrality of their position in this respect is
attested by the close relations maintained between Caere and Rome,
as well as by the traces of ancient intercourse between the Latins
and the Carthaginians. It was through the medium of the Hellenes
that the Cannanite race became known to the Romans, for, as we have
already seen,(7) they always designated it by its Greek name; but
the fact that they did not borrow from the Greeks either the name
for the city of Carthage(8) or the national name of the -Afri-,(9)
and the circumstance that among the earlier Romans Tyrian wares were
designated by the adjective -Sarranus-,(10) which in like manner
precludes the idea of Greek intervention, demonstrate--what the
treaties of a later period concur in proving--the direct commercial
intercourse anciently subsisting between Latium and Carthage.

The combined power of the Italians and Phoenicians actually succeeded
in substantially retaining the western half of the Mediterranean
in their hands. The northwestern portion of Sicily, with the
important ports of Soluntum and Panormus on the north coast, and
Motya at the point which looks towards Africa, remained in the
direct or indirect possession of the Carthaginians. About the
age of Cyrus and Croesus, just when the wise Bias was endeavouring
to induce the Ionians to emigrate in a body from Asia Minor and
settle in Sardinia (about 200), the Carthaginian general Malchus
anticipated them, and subdued a considerable portion of that important
island by force of arms; half a century later, the whole coast of
Sardinia appears in the undisputed possession of the Carthaginian
community. Corsica on the other hand, with the towns of Alalia
and Nicaea, fell to the Etruscans, and the natives paid to these
tribute of the products of their poor island, pitch, wax, and honey.
In the Adriatic sea, moreover, the allied Etruscans and Carthaginians
ruled, as in the waters to the west of Sicily and Sardinia. The
Greeks, indeed, did not give up the struggle. Those Rhodians and
Cnidians, who had been driven out of Lilybaeum, established themselves
on the islands between Sicily and Italy and founded there the town
of Lipara (175). Massilia flourished in spite of its isolation, and
soon monopolized the trade of the region from Nice to the Pyrenees.
At the Pyrenees themselves Rhoda (now Rosas) was established as an
offset from Lipara, and it is affirmed that Zacynthians settled in
Saguntum, and even that Greek dynasts ruled at Tingis (Tangiers)
in Mauretania. But the Hellenes no longer gained ground; after
the foundation of Agrigentum they did not succeed in acquiring any
important additions of territory on the Adriatic or on the western
sea, and they remained excluded from the Spanish waters as well
as from the Atlantic Ocean. Every year the Liparaeans had their
conflicts with the Tuscan "sea-robbers," and the Carthaginians with
the Massiliots, the Cyrenaeans, and above all with the Sicilian
Greeks; but no results of permanent moment were on either side
achieved, and the issue of struggles which lasted for centuries
was, on the whole, the simple maintenance of the -status quo-.

Thus Italy was--if but indirectly--indebted to the Phoenicians for
the exemption of at least her central and northern provinces from
colonization, and for the counter-development of a national maritime
power there, especially in Etruria. But there are not wanting
indications that the Phoenicians already found it worth while
to manifest that jealousy which is usually associated with naval
domination, if not in reference to their Latin allies, at any rate
in reference to their Etruscan confederates, whose naval power was
greater. The statement as to the Carthaginians having prohibited
the sending forth of an Etruscan colony to the Canary islands, whether
true or false, reveals the existence of a rivalry of interests in
the matter.




Notes for Book I Chapter X


1. Whether the name of Graeci was originally associated with the
interior of Epirus and the region of Dodona, or pertained rather
to the Aetolians who perhaps earlier reached the western sea, may
be left an open question; it must at a remote period have belonged
to a prominent stock or aggregate of stocks of Greece proper and
have passed over from these to the nation as a whole. In the Eoai
of Hesiod it appears as the older collective name for the nation,
although it is manifest that it is intentionally thrust aside and
subordinated to that of Hellenes. The latter does not occur in
Homer, but, in addition to Hesiod, it is found in Archilochus about
the year 50, and it may very well have come into use considerably
earlier (Duncker, Gesch. d. Alt. iii. 18, 556). Already before this
period, therefore, the Italians were so widely acquainted with the
Greeks that that name, which early fell into abeyance in Hellas,
was retained by them as a collective name for the Greek nation,
even when the latter itself adopted other modes of self-designation.
It was withal only natural that foreigners should have attained to
an earlier and clearer consciousness of the fact that the Hellenic
stocks belonged to one race than the latter themselves, and that
hence the collective designation should have become more definitely
fixed among the former than with the latter--not the less, that it
was not taken directly from the well-known Hellenes who dwelt the
nearest to them. It is difficult to see how we can reconcile with
this fact the statement that a century before the foundation of
Rome Italy was still quite unknown to the Greeks of Asia Minor.
We shall speak of the alphabet below; its history yields entirely
similar results. It may perhaps be characterized as a rash step
to reject the statement of Herodotus respecting the age of Homer
on the strength of such considerations; but is there no rashness
in following implicitly the guidance of tradition in questions of
this kind?