But part of ancient Italy, and a still larger part of Italy in the modern sense, was inhabited by nations other than the Italians. ♦Iapygians.♦ In the heel of the boot were the _Iapygians_, a people of uncertain origin, but who seem in any case to have had a great gift of receiving the Greek language and manners. ♦Gauls.♦ And in the northern part, in the lands which were not then counted as part of Italy, were the _Gauls_, a Celtic people, akin to the Gauls beyond the Alps, and whose country was therefore called _Cisalpine Gaul_ or Gaul on this side of the Alps. They were found on both sides of the Po, and on the Hadriatic coast they seem to have stretched in early times almost as far south as _Ancona_. ♦Veneti.♦ In the north-east corner of Italy were yet another people, the _Veneti_, perhaps of Illyrian origin, whose name long after was taken by the city of _Venice_. But during the whole time with which we have to do, there was no city so called, and the name of _Venetia_ is always the name of a country. ♦Greek colonies in Italy.♦ All these nations we may look on as the original inhabitants of Italy; that is, all were there before anything like contemporary history begins.[5] But besides these original nations, there were in one part of Italy many Greek colonies, and also in the island of Sicily. Some cities of Italy claimed to be Greek colonies, without any clear proof that they were so. But there seems no reason to doubt that _Kymê_ or _Cumæ_ on the western coast of Italy, and _Ankôn_ or _Ancona_ on the Hadriatic, were solitary Greek colonies far away from any other Greek settlements. Cumæ, though so far off, is said to have been the earliest Greek colony in Italy. But where the Greeks mainly settled was in the two lesser peninsulas, the heel and the toe of the boot, into which the great peninsula of Italy divides at its southern end. Here, as was before said, there is a nearer approach to the kind of coast to which the Greeks were used at home. Here then arose a number of Greek cities, stretching from the extreme south almost up to Cumæ. As in the case of the Greek cities in Asia, the time of greatness of the Italian Greeks came earlier than that of the Greeks in Greece itself. In the sixth century B.C. some of these Greek colonies in Italy, as _Taras_ or _Tarentum_, _Krotôn_ or _Crotona_, _Sybaris_, and others, were among the greatest cities of the Greek name. But, as the Italian nations grew stronger, the Greek cities lost their power, and many of them, Cumæ among them, fell into the hands of Italian conquerors, and lost their Greek character more or less thoroughly. Others remained Greek till they became subject to Rome, and the Greek speech and manners did not quite die out of southern Italy till ages after the Christian æra. ♦Inhabitants of Sicily.♦