We have no early account of these Asiatic settlements. Their traditions were not apparently discussed critically till the time of Ephorus, the pupil of Isocrates, who lived close to Alexandrian days; and we know part of what he said from quotations in Strabo and from the account given, rather irrelevantly, by Pausanias in the book on Achaia in his _Tour_, which was not composed till our second century. The metrical geography attributed to Scymnus of Chios[54:1] gives us some additional facts; but on the whole we may say that our account of all this early history is derived from late and very theoretical antiquarians. They did not hesitate to put these events into the tenth or eleventh century before Christ, but on what kind of evidence we shall presently discuss. From the Asiatic settlements and from the rich cities in Eubœa (Chalcis and Eretria) went out more colonies to the coasts of Thrace and the Black Sea; but these are placed at such reasonable dates, in the seventh century, that we must be disposed to give them easier credence. [Sidenote: The colonization of the West.] § 28. Intermediate between these two waves of colonization, both in date and in credibility of details, come the famous settlements in Sicily, of which a brief account is given by Thucydides at the opening of his sixth book; and it is no doubt the apparent precision of this account, and the general accuracy of the author, which has made this colonization of Sicily and Southern Italy one of the early portions of Greek history most readily accepted by even the newest sceptics. It is quite extraordinary how the general seriousness and the literary skill of an author may make even practised critics believe anything he chooses to say[55:1]. [Sidenote: The original authority.] Any one who reads with care the account of Thucydides will see that he cannot possibly be writing from his own knowledge or research, but from some older and far worse authority,--doubtless one of the chroniclers[55:2] or story-tellers who gathered, most uncritically, the early legends of various portions of the Greek world. It has long since been suggested, and with the strongest probability, that Thucydides' authority was the Syracusan Antiochus, who compiled the early annals of Sicily with the evident intention of enhancing the glory of his native city. On what principles did these chroniclers proceed? [Sidenote: What was nobility in early Greece?] [Sidenote: Macedonian kings.] [Sidenote: Romans.]