These cities were very various in their origin and in the occasion and period of their respective foundations; but there subsisted between them a certain fellowship, as in the common use by all of these towns of certain modern forms of the alphabet,( 2) and in the very Dorism of their language, which made its way at an early date even into those towns that, like Cumae for example,( 3) originally spoke the soft Ionic dialect.

These settlements were of very various degrees of importance in their bearing on the development of Italy: it is sufficient at present to mention those which exercised a decided influence over the destinies of the Italian races, the Doric Tarentum and the Ionic Cumae.
Tarentum Of all the Hellenic settlements in Italy, Tarentum was destined to play the most brilliant part.

The excellent harbour, the only good one on the whole southern coast, rendered the city the natural emporium for the traffic of the south of Italy, and for some portion even of the commerce of the Adriatic.

The rich fisheries of its gulf, the production and manufacture of its excellent wool, and the dyeing of it with the purple juice of the Tarentine -murex-, which rivalled that of Tyre--both branches of industry introduced there from Miletus in Asia Minor--employed thousands of hands, and added to the carrying trade a traffic of export.

The coins struck at Tarentum in greater quantity than anywhere else in Grecian Italy, and struck pretty numerously even in gold, furnish to us a significant attestation of the lively and widely extended commerce of the Tarentines.