A little consideration will show that by looking to the _sea_ as the medium of communication we get rid of the gravest of the previous difficulties; though it must be admitted that we get another in the place of it. It may fairly be urged that conquests by sea are less complete and perfect than those by land; so that though they may be admitted as explanatory of settlements on the coast, they are insufficient to account for the reduction of the more inland and mountainous parts of a country. This is an objection as far as it goes: yet it would be hazardous to say that either Greece was more purely Hellenic, or Italy more exclusively Italian, at the beginning of their respective historical areas, than England was Anglo-Saxon in the reign of Alfred. Yet the Anglo-Saxon conquest was maritime. That, at the very earliest dawn of the historical period, there was a great amount of Greek elements in Southern Italy is universally admitted; the only doubtful point being as to the way of explaining them. They fall into two classes-- 1. Those that are accounted for by colonization from Greece to Italy within the historical period. 2. Those that are not so explained. It is the latter upon which a partial confirmation of the doctrine of the present chapter is based. _a._ The Æolus of Homer, who in spite of some difficulties of detail, we must look upon as the eponymus of Æolia, has his residence in the islands off the south coast of Italy; and, it must be remembered, that, except so far as this Æolus is the eponymus he is here considered to be, Homer knows nothing of the Æolians. _b._ The Ionian Sea is the sea that washes the coasts of Italy, and not the sea which comes in contact with the shores of _Ionian_ Asia. _c._ Old geographical names, significant in the Greek language, are commoner in Southern Italy and Sicily, than in Greece itself; as Phalacrium Promontorium, Nebrodes Mons, Clibanus Mons, Petra, Xiphonia Promontorium, Crotalus Fluvius, &c. Nowhere are these commoner than in the Sicanian country, the part generally considered the most barbarian, but, more probably, the part where the character of the aborigines survived longest--Panormus, Ercta, Bathys Fluvius, Cetaria (probably a fishery), Drepanum, Selinus, Ægithallus. Almost all the islands have names more or less Greek, Strongyle, Phœnicodes, Ericodes, and a great number ending in -_usa_, as Pithec-_usa_, &c. Ortygia, is mentioned by Hesiod. _d._ The names which, in Greek, end in -οεις take, in Southern Italy, the older forms in -_ntum_--as Μαλοεις, Maleve_ntum_; Σολοεις, Solve_ntum_. _e._ The Greeks themselves recognise the existence of colonies planted by their forefathers in Italy long anterior to the beginning of the historical period, _e.g._, that of Cumæ, seventeen generations before the Trojan war. This may fairly be construed into an admission of their ignorance as to their origin.