Of the law-givers I have just mentioned one belonged to Catane, a Greek city in Sicily. This fact suggests another important movement which demands our notice. I mean the planting of colonies. The great era of Hellenic colonization fell between the eighth and sixth centuries, and was in a sense but a continuation of that earlier wave of expansion which had carried the Greeks to Cyprus and to the nearer shores of Asia Minor. Among the causes which led to the establishment of colonies the chief seem to have been defects in the land system, whereby many were deprived of a share in their ancestral estates, political conditions often oppressive, and trade, which was now coming largely into the hands of Greeks because of the disasters which were inflicted on their former rivals, the Phoenicians, by their eastern neighbors. From Megara and Miletus, from Chalcis and Eretria, began an outpouring of eager traders, of the landless, the needy, the discontented, and the adventurous, who eventually planted colonies entirely around the Mediterranean and Euxine Seas. Between these colonies and the mother cities a rich stream of traffic flowed; the growth of trade stimulated manufactures and increased wealth. In the colonies there existed from the beginning greater equality than in the older communities, the land system was more equitable, and many men of humble birth came to wealth and power. Furthermore, with travel and success in new communities there was an expansion of mind, a sense of power acquired by prosperity, such as can always be observed under similar conditions. These developments had their reflex influence on the society of the mother cities, and both at home and in the colonies there came to pass those political and social changes to which I have referred above. But the most important result of these things for our present consideration was the fact that by these developments large numbers of men were awakened to self-consciousness, and that the first period of individualism in Greece was begun.