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ANCIENT GREECE.[ciur. y.of Lesbos ;on the continent they built twelve cities, and onLesbos Mitylcne ?winch now gives a name to the whole island. Smyrna, the only one which has preserved a part ofits splendour, and Cyme, exceeded all the rest on the mainland. ^Eolis was bounded on the south by Ionia,, a regionso called from the twelve Ionian cities, which were built bythe lonians, who had been expelled from their ancient country. They also occupied the neighbouring islands Chiosand Sanios. If jEolis could boast of superior fertility, theIonian sky was celebrated with the Greeks as the mildest1and most delightful Of these cities, Miletus, Ephesus,and Phocfoa became flourishing commercial towns j themothers of many daughters, extending from the shores ofthe Black Sea and Lake Macotis, to the coasts of Gaul andIberia. Neither were the Dorians content with their conquest of the Peloponnesus; troops of them thronged to Asia;Cos, and the wealthy Rhodes, as well as the cities Halicarnassusand Cnidus, were peopled by them. In this manner,as the series of cities planted by the Grecians ascended theMacedonian and Thracian coast to Byzantium, the JEgeanSea was encircled with Grecian colonies, and its islands werecovered with them. But the mother country seems soon tohave been filled again and as the east offeree! no more ;room,the emigrants wandered to the west. At a somewhat later period, but with hardly less success, the coasts of Lower Italy,which soon took the name of Mugna Orsocia, and those ofSicily, were occupied by Dorians," Achseans,On the gulf of T arcntum, not only the city of thatand lonians.*name,but Croton and Sybaris soon rose to a degree of populationand wealth, bordering on the fabulous ;whilst the chain oftowns extended by way of Rhegium and Psostum as far asCumss and Naples. These colonial towns were still morefrequent on the coasts of Sicily, from Mcssana and the unrivalled Syracuse to the proud Agrigcntum. And in thenow desolate Barca, on the coast of Libya, Gyrene flourishedwith the towns of which it was the metropolis, and provedthat Greeks remained true to their origin even in Africa.We reserve for another chapter the consideration of the1Herod, i. 142.2Especially between the years BOO and 700 before the Christian era, Yet^single colonies were earlier established.