In Corsica, Sardinia, and on the coast of Spain Carthage also proved too obstinate a rival for the Greeks to gain much of a foothold. The city of Massilia (Marseilles), at the mouth of the Rhone, was their chief settlement in ancient Gaul. Two colonies on the southern shore of the Mediterranean were Cyrene, west of Egypt, and Naucratis, in the Delta of the Nile. From this time many Greek travelers visited Egypt to see the wonders of that strange old country. RESULTS OF COLONIZATION Energetic Greeks, the greatest colonizers of antiquity, thus founded settlements from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. "All the Greek colonies" says an ancient writer, "are washed by the waves of the sea, and, so to speak, a fringe of Greek earth is woven on to foreign lands." [28] To distinguish themselves from the foreigners, or "barbarians," [29] about them, the Greeks began to call themselves by the common name of Hellenes. Hellas, their country, came to include all the territory possessed by Hellenic peoples. The life of the Greeks, henceforth, was confined no longer within the narrow limits of the Aegean. Wherever rose a Greek city, there was a scene of Greek history. 30. BONDS OF UNION AMONG THE GREEKS LANGUAGE AS A UNIFYING FORCE The Greek colonies, as we have seen, were free and independent. In Greece itself the little city-states were just as jealous of their liberties. Nevertheless ties existed, not of common government, but of common interests and ideals, which helped to unite the scattered sections of the Greek world. The strongest bond of union was, of course, the one Greek speech. Everywhere the people used the same beautiful and expressive language. It is not a "dead" language, for it still lives in modified form on the lips of nearly three million people in the Greek peninsula, throughout the Mediterranean, and even in remote America. LITERATURE AS UNIFYING FORCE; HOMER Greek literature, likewise, made for unity. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ were recited in every Greek village for centuries. They formed the principal textbook in the schools; an Athenian philosopher calls Homer the "educator of Hellas." It has been well said that these two epics were at once the Bible and the Shakespeare of the Greek people. RELIGION AS A UNIFYING FORCE; AMPHICTYONIES Religion formed another bond of union. Everywhere the Greeks worshiped the same gods and performed the same sacred rites. Religious influences were sometimes strong enough to bring about federations known as amphictyonies, or leagues of neighbors. The people living around a famous sanctuary would meet to observe their festivals in common and to guard the shrine of their divinity. The Delphic amphictyony was the most noteworthy of these local unions. It included twelve tribes and cities of central Greece and Thessaly. They established a council, which took the shrine of Apollo under its protection and superintended the athletic games at Delphi. A NEW AGE