and made the circuit of the board. Every eye was fixed on her; he was to be
her choice to whom she offered the bowl. She did not hesitate for a moment,
she went to the Greek stranger and extended it to him. Protis put the
goblet to his lips, and the alliance was concluded.

The example of Gyptis was followed by some of her maidens. The Gauls agreed
to receive the Greeks, and suffer them to colonise the basin of Marseilles.

But the chiefs who had been set aside by the fair Gyptis bore a grudge
against the new-comers. The growing prosperity and rapid development of
the new settlement aroused their jealousy, which was probably augmented by
the defection of some of their wives and daughters. Profiting by the Feast
of Flora in May, they presented themselves at the gates of Marseilles in
attendance on some waggons laden with green boughs, under which were their
arms concealed. But love, that had founded the Ionian colony, was destined
to save it. A young Gaulish woman revealed the plot to her Hellenic lover,
and the Greeks laid their hands on the arms that were to have been employed
against them, turned them against the intrusive Gauls, and massacred them
to a man.

But having thus saved themselves from one danger they felt that they had
incurred another. They had provoked the deadly animosity of the whole tribe
of the Segobrigae. They therefore appealed to their countrymen in Ionia to
come to their aid. The appeal met with a ready response, a second fleet of
colonists arrived. Marseilles was encompassed with walls on the land side,
and thus made secure against the assaults of undisciplined barbarians.

Such is the graceful legend of the origin of Marseilles. It is only so far
historical that it gives us in poetic and romantic form the main facts,
that the first colony settled at Marseilles without opposition, that after