The cities of western Greece stood then as if founded for all eternity; they were adorned with splendid buildings, the gayest and most luxurious life developed in their streets; and they had leisure enough, after the Greek manner, to dissipate their energies, which were not claimed by external enemies, in internal strife and in struggles for the hegemony. Only the bold attempts which Phocæa made in the sixth century to turn the western basin of the Mediterranean likewise into a Greek sea, to get a firm footing in Corsica and southern Spain, had succumbed to the resistance of the Carthaginians, who were in alliance with the Etruscans. Only in the north, on the coast of Liguria from the Alps to the Pyrenees, Massalia maintained its independence. Southern Spain, Gades, and the coast of the land of Tarshish (Tartessus) were occupied by the Carthaginians about the middle of the fifth century; and the Greeks and all foreign mariners in general were cut off from the navigation of the ocean, as well as from the coasts of North Africa and Sardinia. In the fourth century the political situation is totally changed in both east and west. The Greeks are reduced to the defensive and lose one position after the other. A few years after the destruction of the Athenian expedition the Carthaginians stretched out their hands for Sicily; in the years 409 and 406 they take and destroy Selinus, Himera, and Agrigentum; in the wars of the following years every other Greek city of the island except Syracuse was temporarily occupied and plundered by them. In Italy after the middle of the fifth century a new people made their entrance into history, the Sabellian (Oscan) mountain tribes. From the valleys of the Abruzzi and the Samnitic Apennines they pressed forward towards the rich plains of the coast, and the land of civilisation with its inhabitants succumbed to them almost everywhere. To be sure, the Sabines under Rome defended themselves against the Æquians and Volscians, and so did the Apulians in the east against the Frentanians and Pentrians of Samnium. But the Etruscans of Capua and Nola and the Greeks of Cumæ were overcome (438 and 421 B.C.) by the Sabellian Campanians, and Naples alone in this district was able to preserve its independence. In the south the Lucanians advanced farther and farther, took Posidonia (Pæstum) in 400 B.C., Pyxus, Laos, and harassed the Greek cities of the east coast and the south.