In all their varieties of fortune, the Grecian colonies had maintained the manners and institutions of the mother country, which no people ever entirely relinquish with the soil they have left. A close political connection also subsisted between them; and, about the year 300 of Rome, the Athenians sent to the assistance of Sybaris a powerful expedition, which, on the decay of that city, founded the town of Thurium in the immediate vicinity. This constant intercourse cherished and preserved the literary spirit of the colonies of Magna Græcia. Herodotus, the father of history, and Lysias, whose orations are the purest models of the simple Attic eloquence, were, in early youth, among the original founders of the colony of Thurium(103), and the latter held a share in its government till an advanced period of life. The Eleatic school of philosophy was founded in Magna Græcia; and the impulse which the wisdom of Pythagoras had given to the mind, promoted also the studies of literature. Plato visited Tarentum during the consulship of Lucius Camillus and Appius Claudius(104), which was in the 406th year of Rome, and Zeuxis was invited from Greece to paint at Crotona the magnificent temple of Juno, which had been erected in that city(105). History and poetry were cultivated with a success which did not dishonour the Grecian name. Lycus of Rhegium was the civil, and Glaucus of the same city was the literary historian of Magna Græcia. Orpheus of Crotona was the author of a poem on the expedition of the Argonauts, attributed to an elder Orpheus. The lyric productions of Ibicus of Rhegium rivalled those of Anacreon and Alcæus. Two hundred and fifty-five comedies, written by Alexis of Thurium, the titles of which have been collected by Meursius, and a few fragments of them by Stephens, are said to have been composed in the happiest vein of the middle comedy of the Greeks, which possessed much of the comic force of Aristophanes and Cratinus, without their malignity. In his Meropis and Ancylio, this dramatist is supposed to have carped at Plato; and his comedy founded on the life of Pythagoras, was probably in a similar vein of satire. Stephano, the son of Alexis, and who, according to Suidas, was the uncle of Menander, became chiefly celebrated for his tragedies; but his comedies were also distinguished by happy pictures of life, and uncommon harmony of versification.