The name _Italy_ was applied at different times to a very different extent of country. The Greeks, who scarcely ever transferred themselves from their own point of view to that of other nations, inform us, that the name _Italia_, beginning in the extreme south, and belonging to a small tract of country, became gradually extended. They relate, that in ancient times the Oenotrians, under this name or without any name, produced the sage Italus, who led them from a state of perfect wildness, or from a life depending on the chase, like that ascribed by the Romans to the Aborigines, to agriculture and fixed habitations, and became their lawgiver. That his laws, resembling those of Minos, were observed for many centuries, and that at first the name Italia was restricted to the southern half of Bruttium, that is, the peninsula between Rhegium and the isthmus, extending from the Scylletian to the Napetinian gulf; that the name was then extended so as to comprise, in about its widest sense, the country south of a line drawn from Posidonia to Metapontum. This whole derivation from the Oenotrian period is without any authority whatever, though it is certain, that in the time of the Persian wars, and perhaps even somewhat later, that line actually formed the boundary of Italy. Nay, that boundary, instead of extending in the course of a whole century, even became somewhat narrower, and the line, instead of beginning at Posidonia, ran from the river Laos to Metapontum, along the subsequent frontier between Lucania and Bruttium, so that the north-western part of the country was detached from it. This boundary afterwards remained fixed with the Greeks; and the countries north of it were designated by different names, of which I shall speak hereafter. But after the middle of the fifth century of Rome, or about twenty years after the death of Alexander, the name Italia was extended by the Greeks as far as the Tiber. Previously Cumae had not been in Italy, but now even Rome is spoken of as a city of Italy.