=92.= The fertile island of Sicily early attracted the attention of the Greeks. The Carthaginians already occupied the western side of the island, but for two and a half centuries the commercial settlements of either people flourished side by side without collision. Twelve flourishing Greek cities sprang up within 150 years, among which _Syracuse_, on the eastern, and _Agrigentum_, on the southern coast, were the most important. Syracuse, the earliest, except Naxos, of the Sicilian colonies, was founded by Corinthians, B. C. 734. Its position made it the door to the whole island, and in Roman times it was the capital of the province. In its greatest prosperity it contained half a million of inhabitants, and its walls were twenty-two miles in extent. Agrigentum, though of later origin (B. C. 582), grew so fast that it outstripped its older neighbors. The poet Pindar called it the fairest of mortal cities, and its public buildings were among the most magnificent in the ancient world. =93.= AFRICAN COLONIES. Greek colonization was at first confined to the northern shores of the Mediterranean, Egypt and Carthage dividing between them the southern. But the policy of Psammetichus, and, after him, of Amasis, favored the Greeks, who were thenceforth permitted to settle at Naucratis, and enjoy there a monopoly of the Mediterranean commerce of Egypt. Twenty years after the first establishment at Naucratis, _Cyrene_ was founded by the people of Thera, a Spartan colony on the Ægean. Unlike most Greek colonies, Cyrene was governed by kings during the first two centuries of its existence. =94.= The peninsula of Chalcid´ice, in Macedonia, was covered with the settlements of colonists from Chalcis and Eretria, from the former of which it derived its name. _Potidæ´a_, on the same coast, was planted by Corinthians. _Byzantium_ was founded by Megarians, on the strait which connects the Propontis with the Euxine. Few cities could boast so splendid a position; but the power of the Megarian colony bore little proportion to what it was afterward to attain as the capital of Constantine and the mistress of the world. The most northerly Grecian settlement was _Istria_, founded by Milesians near the mouth of the Danube. RECAPITULATION.