Authentic history begins toward the end of the eighth century before our
era. It is a bright burst; for then, down by yonder green-foaming rock,
the young Greek mariners leaped on the strand. This was their first
land-fall in Sicily; that rock, their Plymouth; and here, doubtless, the
alarmed mountaineers stood in their fastness and watched the bearers of
the world's torch, and knew them not, bringing daybreak to the dark
island for evermore, but fought, as barbarism will, against the light,
and were at last made friends with it--a chance that does not always
befall. Then quickly rose the lowland city of Naxos, and by the river
sprang up the temple to Guiding Apollo, the earliest shrine of the
Sicilian Greeks, where they came ever afterward to pray for a prosperous
voyage when they would go across the sea, homeward. They were from the
first a fighting race; and decade by decade the cloud of war grew
heavier on each horizon, southward from Syracuse and northward from
Messina, and swords beat fiercer and stronger with the rivalries of
growing states--battles dimly discerned now.
Pages:
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36