Besides these settlements in the Mediterranean itself, there were also a good many Greek colonies on the western, northern, and southern coasts of the Euxine, of which those best worth remembering are the city of _Chersonêsos_ in the peninsula called the _Tauric Chersonêsos_, now Crimea, and _Trapezous_ on the southern coast. These two deserve notice as being two most abiding seats of Greek influence. Chersonêsos, under the name of _Cherson_, remained an independent Greek commonwealth longer than any other, and Trapezous or _Trebizond_ became the seat of Greek-speaking Emperors, who outlived those of Constantinople. Speaking generally then, we may say that, in the most famous times of European Greece, in the time of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, the whole coast of the Ægæan was part of the immediate Greek world, while in Sicily and Cyprus Greek colonies were contending with the Phœnicians, and in Italy with the native Italians. Massalia was the centre of a group of Greek states in the north-west, and Kyrênê in the south, while the greater part of the coast of the Euxine was also dotted with Greek cities here and there. In most of these colonies the Greeks mixed to some extent with the natives, and the natives to some extent learned the Greek language and manners. ♦Beginning of the artificial Greek nation.♦ We thus get the beginning of what we call an artificial Greek nation, a nation Greek in speech and manners, but not purely Greek in blood, which has gone on ever since. § 7. _Growth of Macedonia and Epeiros._ ♦Growth of Macedonia.♦