Retrospect

The Greeks in the West, both those on the coasts of Italy and those on Sicily, had finally fallen under the dominion of others. Half a millennium had passed since the establishment of the first Greek colonies in the West; and considering that Greek settlement, especially in Italy, had never penetrated far into the interior - that is to say that the Greek colonies there always remained isolated enclaves in a land mostly held by others -, it is perhaps remarkable that the Greeks managed to hold on for so long. Much of the Greeks’ success rested on superior military technology and a political organization which allowed them to wage war more effectively than their more numerous neighbors. These for their part, however, did not stand still in time. As the centuries passed they too developed - not least according to the model which their Greek neighbors held up - such that they began to compete with the Greeks on a level field, or rather on one which would have been level had they not badly outnumbered the Greeks. Hence the Greeks’ eventual need for help from outside, whether from Sicily or mainland Greece, whenever they came into conflict with the Italian tribes in the fourth and third centuries BC It was, then, only a matter of time before they succumbed when such help was not forthcoming.

On Sicily the Greeks always had to compete with Carthage such that their position on the island was never wholly secure, and on several occasions the Carthaginians came within a hair’s breadth of overwhelming the Greeks. In the end, however, it was the rise of Rome which spelled the end of the Greeks’ independence on the island. Their compatriots in mainland Greece and in the East would, over the next two centuries, suffer the same fate (see chap. 24).