A General History for Colleges and High Schools

t a good thing: let us have one ruler only,-one king,-him to whom Zeus has given the sceptre." But by the dawn of the historic peri

and invariably opposed by the common freemen, who, as they grew in intelligence and wealth, naturally aspired to a place in the government. Th

had thus seized the government was called a tyrant. By this term the Greeks did not mean one who rules harshly, but simply one who holds the supreme au

than three generations. They were usually violently overthrown, and the old oligarchies re-established, or democracies set up in their place. As a rule

n a decade enjoyed such astonishing and uninterrupted prosperity, that it was believed his sudden downfall and death-he was allured to the Asian shore by a Persian satrap, and crucified-were brought about by the envy of the gods, [Footnote: Herodotus tells how Amasis of Egypt, the friend and ally of the Tyrant, becoming alarmed at his extraordinary course of good fortune, wrote him, begging him to interrupt it and disarm the envy of the gods, by sacrificing his most valued possession. Pol

pon remote and widely separated shores the basis of "Dispersed Hellas." The overcrowding of population and the Greek love of adventure also contributed to swell the number of emigrants. During this colonizing era Southern Italy became so thickly set with Greek cities as to become known as Magna Gr?cia, "Great Gr

nth, the city of Syracuse (734 B.C.), which, before Rome

he important Ionian city of Massalia (Marseilles), th

s founded the great Dor

t the same time was esta

hrough which the civiliz

ee

pontis were fringed with colonies. The Argonautic terrors of the Black Sea were forgotten or unheeded, and even those remote shores received their emigrants. Ma

colonizer occupies in the world of today. Many of these colonies not only reflected honor upon the mother land through the just renown of the