the natural consequence of circumstances; and it is absurd to expect of such a wealthy commercial people, that it should be as great in war as an agricultural people. They, no doubt, did not conceal from themselves the fact that their military system was bad; but politics cannot always control all circumstances. The Tarentines certainly do not deserve the reproach of ingratitude towards Alexander of Epirus, for his intention was to set himself up as king of southern Italy, and he first acted as an enemy towards them. The fate of Tarentum in its contest with Rome is known from history: after the fall of Samnium, it threw itself into the arms of Pyrrhus, after whose death it was betrayed and sold. According to the Roman historians, Rome treated the city very generously, leaving it independent: this independence, however, may have been a mere name; the Romans for a longtime kept a garrison there, which, in the Hannibalian war defended the old town against the siege of Hannibal. The new town threw itself into the arms of the Carthaginian, but he could not maintain it, and the inhabitants were obliged to surrender to the Romans, who now took cruel vengeance and destroyed the place. In the time of C. Gracchus it became a Roman colony. The Greek towns of Southern Italy are comprised under the general name of MAGNA GRAECIA; whether this name also included Tarentum, or whether it was limited to the coast of Oenotrian Italy, and whether it also embraced the interior, these are questions which, so far as I know, the ancients do not decide, though the name was in use at a very early period. If we possessed the work of Antiochus of Syracuse, a contemporary of Herodotus, it would perhaps furnish us information about it; from Ephorus and Eratosthenes we could hardly expect to learn anything on this point. It is possible also that the name ἡ μεγάλη Ἑλλάς may not have been confined to the Greek towns.