Early Greece

by Oswyn Murray

  The importance of defence dominated many aspects of colonization. The Greeks preferred areas which were uninhabited or where the natives were still primitive and ill-organized. In Sicily the local Sicel population was mainly in the hills; pre-Greek finds at colonial sites show that, though earlier native settlements often existed, they were small and could be easily overwhelmed. The colonists themselves were small groups, but all men of fighting age; from the early seventh century the new heavier armour and massed infantry tactics (ch. 8) will have made such trained bands effective against far larger numbers. The poetry of Archilochos brings out the military aspects of colonization clearly. His father led a colony from Paros to Thasos in the 680s; when he joined it in the middle of the century, archaeology shows that it was already well established. But the fighting against ‘the Thracian dogs’ (Frag. 93a) was continuous in ‘Thasos, three times lousy city’ (Frag. 228): ‘I weep for the ills of Thasos, not the Magnesians’ (Frag. 20). ‘The island stood out like a donkey’s back, ringed with shaggy woods.… not a pretty place, not lovely, not desirable like the land round the streams of Siris’ (Frag. 21–2: Siris was founded by Colophonians in south Italy about this time.) His fellow colonists were as bad: ‘the dregs of all the Greeks have run together in Thasos’ (Frag. 102). Archilochos shows an aristocratic disdain for the city he protected, and the wilful pride in himself as warrior that had marked the champions of an older generation: ‘I am a servant of lord Ares, and know the lovely gift of the Muses’ (Frag. I); ‘in my spear is my daily bread, in my spear my Ismaric wine, on my spear I lean and drink’ (Frag. 2). But there is also a new realism: ‘I don’t like a tall officer with straggly legs, dandy hairstyle and careful shaving: give me a short man with thick-set bandy legs, standing firmly on his feet and full of guts’ (Frag. 114). And perhaps because he lived in a period of transition between two styles of fighting, Archilochos can mock the ideals of both in another poem:

  Some Thracian waves my shield, which I was forced to leave behind undamaged, hidden under a bush. But I saved myself: why should I care about the shield? Let it go. I’ll get another just as good again.

  (Fragment 5 = 4D)

  The loss of his shield was the ultimate shame for a soldier. But despite Archilochos’ scorn, Thasos was not ungrateful to its champions: a monument implying some form of cult has been found, an altar or a cenotaph in honour of Archilochos’ friend Glaukos, of the late seventh century:

  I am the memorial of Glaukos son of Leptines: the sons of Brentes set me up.

  (Greek Historical Inscriptions no. 4)

  Without such warriors the Greeks could not have colonized.

  It was information derived from traders that determined the siting of many early colonies: pre-colonial trading posts located at the end of a route leading inland, where traders collected wares and occasionally wintered, have been discovered in the vicinity of some of the south Italian colonies; and for reasons of supply and communication colonies tended to cluster along trade routes. But trade affected the colonies in more than mere position. The chief colonizing cities, Chalcis, Eretria, Corinth, Megara, Miletus, Phocaea, all seem to have had strong trading interests. It is usual to distinguish the trading post (emporion) from the colony (apoikia, ‘settlement away from home’): trading posts are seen as having grown up spontaneously from mixed communities of traders, whereas colonies were established by particular cities or groups at a particular date and by public act. The distinction is a valid one, but not as clear cut as it might seem: were the settlements of Pithecusae on Ischia or Spina apoikiai or emporia? Herodotus indeed calls the colonies of the northern Black Sea coast emporia (4.24). Certainly colonies were founded in the traditional manner from time to time for reasons connected with trade. The clearest examples are those foundations related in whole or part to the protection of trade routes: the capture of Corcyra by Corinth is one example. Zankle (later Messene), with its fine harbour, was founded early (about 730) by Chalcidians, for piracy or to control the straits of Messina and the route to Ischia: the very absence of land forced them to establish a subsidiary colony to the west at Mylae; it was a logical extension of the primary purpose to arrange another joint foundation with Messenians on the opposite shore of the straits at Rhegium. A similar pattern may lie behind the two Megarian settlements at Chalcedon and Byzantium.

  Obviously colonies exploited the natural resources of their area as soon as they were established, to their own benefit and to that of their home city or trading partner: the evidence of pottery shows that from the start the western colonies imported especially Corinthian ware, and presumably other finished manufactures carried by Corinthians and others; the amount of Laconian pottery at Tarentum shows that it maintained a close relationship with its mother-city Sparta which was at least in part economic, although neither would normally be seen as trading cities. These goods must have been exchanged for local produce, in the west corn and other natural products and slaves, from the Thraceward region silver, hides, timber and slaves, and from the Black Sea corn, dried fish and slaves again. Generally trade of this sort was a consequence rather than a cause of colonization, though cities like Corinth and Miletus were later well aware of the importance of the supply of raw materials. Thus in Sicily there is no archaeological evidence for trade or trading settlements before the earliest colonies: the native culture and natural resources offered little attraction in themselves. Even after foundation, the friendly contact necessary for trade with native Sicels was usually lacking; though the spread of Greek wares inland from Camarina (founded in 598), and its known alliance with Sicels in an unsuccessful revolt against Syracuse in 552, suggest that there could be exceptions. And on the north Black Sea coast, local Scythian chieftains and Greek colonies seem to have collaborated in the export of slaves and corn, in return for the supply of luxury metal work which has been discovered in quantity in Scythian burial mounds.

  Phocaean colonization is an extreme example of these trends:

  The Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks to make long voyages, and it was they who opened up the region of the Adriatic, Etruria, and Spain and Tartessus; they voyaged not in rounded merchantmen but in warships (pentekonters). When they went to Tartessus they became very friendly with the king of the Tartessians, whose name was Arganthonios, who ruled Tartessus for eighty years and lived to be 120. So friendly with this man were the Phocaeans that he first asked them to leave Ionia and live wherever they wished in his territory; but afterwards when he could not persuade them, and heard that the Persian power was increasing in that area, he gave them the money to build a wall round the city: he gave them a great deal, for the circuit of the wall is considerable, and it is all made of large well-fitted stone blocks.

  (Herodotus 1.163)

  Tartessus (Ezekiel’s Tarshish, p. 71) beyond the straits of Gibraltar was the supplier of rare metals such as tin, and especially silver from north-west Spain; the events described by Herodotus can be dated to the period between 640 and 550. The Phocaeans clearly left behind the older foundations, and pioneered the more dangerous and distant routes, in search of untapped markets. Their colony at Massalia (Marseilles, about 600) was no agricultural settlement, for the land is poor: it rather served to control the routes up the Rhone. The legend of its foundation reflects the goodwill of the natives, in the story of how a local princess fell in love with the founder and married him: the Greeks taught the natives agriculture and to wall their cities, how to live by laws not arms; they introduced the vine and the olive, and so changed their way of life that ‘it seemed as if Gaul had moved to Greece, not Greece to Gaul’ (Justin 43.3); archaeological evidence confirms these changes and the gradual Hellenization of the area. Along the Rhone Greek objects travelled as far as the environs of Paris, where in the Seine valley a royal burial at Vix has revealed the finest Greek bronze krater (mixing bowl for wine) yet known, probably of Spartan origin, together with Etruscan and Athenian cups of the end of the sixth century. Sporadic objects have been found also in Switz
erland, Germany, and even Sweden. At the Phocaean colony of Emporion (significant name) in northern Spain, founded about the same time as Massalia, natives and Greeks lived in the same settlement. Phocaean trading enterprise lasted until they fled from the Persians in 545 to their Corsican colony of Alalia. This reinforcement of the west provoked a joint attack by Etruscans and Carthaginians; and though the Phocaeans won the battle of Alalia (540), they had to retire to Elea (Velia) south of the Greek settlements on the bay of Naples; Carthaginians soon gained control of Tartessus, and both southern Spain and Corsica were closed to the Greeks. The Phocaean maritime trading empire may not be unique. Of other trading cities, there is little evidence for the relations between Miletus and her colonies, but Corinth at least often provided the rulers of her colonies and sought to keep some control over them as late as the fifth century; she still sent out magistrates, claimed a number of political rights, and the coinage of many of them reflects Corinthian motifs and weight standards (p. 150).

  Nevertheless the chief economic factor influencing Greek colonization was undoubtedly the search for land. The huge population growth that seems attested by the eighth century graves of Attica (p. 64) seems to be of an order which has only been reached in other periods under circumstances where the normal population constraints are lacking, and in particular in colonial or colonizing societies where land is unlimited: the availability of land and exponential population growth go together as interrelated cause and effect. Though there is no direct evidence outside Attica, a general population increase can be detected throughout the Greek world. Many border wars of the period, even the Lelantine War itself, may well relate to the increasing pressure on land in Greece; the same force has already been seen at work in the agricultural changes of the late Dark Age and the growth of urbanization. Athens had a large territory, and did not feel the need to colonize until very late: the problems this caused are the subject of chapter 11. Most of the other non-colonizing states were similarly in areas where land was more plentiful or where expansion was possible near at home; this perhaps explains the comparative absence of colonies from many of the cities of Asia Minor. In the early seventh century Sparta conquered and colonized her neighbours the Messenians (ch. 10); the settlers in her only overseas colony, Tarentum, were called the Partheniai (maiden-born), allegedly the offspring of Spartan women while their husbands were away fighting in Messenia, and so illegitimate – that is, a group excluded from the Messenian land-distribution for whatever reasons, and so forced to colonize abroad.

  Land was an important consideration in all colonies, even those which had other motives as well, for the new city had to be self-sufficient. But in most colonial sites it was clearly the overriding factor. The traditional Greek principle of inheritance was by equal division between all the sons; in cities with limited territories the constraints on population were powerful; once the new knowledge brought by traders released these constraints, any growth created a potential social problem unless land could be found: the city had to organize settlement abroad in order to avoid disruption at home. The discovery that colonial land was available may well have been a major factor causing an increase in population and therefore more colonization, for many cities sent out several colonies even within one generation. In this complex of interacting cause and effect it is not easy to see how far the colonizing movement was a response to serious internal pressure, land hunger, poverty or famine, and how far it was a reaction to external opportunities, wealth, equality and the freedom from social constraints in a new foundation. There are however two accounts which suggest a strong element of compulsion: the case of Cyrene is discussed below; and when the Eretrian colonists on Corcyra were expelled by the Corinthians, they tried to return home but were driven off by the Eretrians, and sailed to Thracian Methone to found a new colony – hence their nickname, ‘the slung out’ (Plutarch, Moralia 293b). Many colonists also came from inland and perhaps backward areas where shortage of land and economic necessity are likely to have been major factors in causing them to move: the Corinthian settlers who went with Archias to Syracuse came from the inland village of Tenea. The main source of settlers in south Italy, Achaea, was a rural area without important harbours or city settlements: the rich alluvial plains they settled in show their interest in colonizing; their enormous wealth later was derived almost entirely from agriculture, and is symbolized for instance in the emblem chosen for the coins of Metapontum – an ear of corn.

  The emphasis on land emerges from the detailed organization of colonial settlement. It is not in fact easy to build up a picture of the actual process of colonization: the scattered facts that survive are often anecdotal, and may well be misleading; for each foundation must have been influenced by special considerations as much as by general trends. Nevertheless this was a movement in which ideas and even enterprises were shared; and recent archaeological work, especially in south Italy and Sicily, has revealed certain general tendencies.

  The early chapters of book 6 of Thucydides describe the colonization of Sicily: this is the only surviving account of the settlement of a particular area, and derives almost certainly from a local historian contemporary with Thucydides, Antiochos of Syracuse. It is an excellent example of the nature of colonial foundation traditions: there might also be oral traditions in particular places, but certain essential facts were usually remembered – the name of the original leader of the colony, the origins of the original settlers, and the age of the foundation. The preservation of these facts seems closely related to religious rituals. The settlers brought out fire from the sacred hearth of the founding city, as a symbolic representation of the continuity of communal ties; the founder of the colony was an aristocratic leader appointed by the mother city: it was he who organized and commanded the settlers, planned the layout of the settlement, supervised the distribution of land and established its legal, political and religious institutions: ‘he drew a wall round the city and built houses, and made temples of the gods and divided the fields’, as Homer says in the passage about Phaeacia, which may well reflect this new development (Odyssey 6.9f). Guarantor and protector of the new community, the founder was treated like the warrior champions of the homeland, and worshipped as a hero after his death. It is somewhat surprising that such honours did not lead to hereditary monarchy; but Cyrene is in fact the only known example where the founder established a dynasty.

  The original settlers came as a group from one or at the most two cities: the cults of the new state naturally reflected their origins, and led to continuing religious ties of an official nature. Beyond the city, one god in particular was important: the oracle of Apollo at Delphi across the Corinthian gulf was naturally consulted by the western colonists, who probably took ship from Corinth: the god asserted his patronage of the new movement with the cult title ‘Apollo the Leader’ (Apollo Archēgetēs). Thucydides describes the Greek arrival in Sicily:

  Of the Greeks the first to come were Chalcidians from Euboea sailing with Thoukles as founder; they established Naxos, and set up the altar of Apollo the Leader which still exists outside the city, and on which the religious delegates from Sicily sacrifice first before they sail (to the Delphic festivals).

  (Thucydides 6.3)

  This shrine was the common religious centre for the Sicilian colonies; I argue in an article that it is the ultimate source of the colonial dates given in Thucydides, which are the only exact and demonstrably accurate group of colonial dates we possess, and are clearly not based on generation counting. These dates are in fact the basis of early Greek chronology, for it is their correlation with the Corinthian pottery found on the Sicilian sites which provides an archaeological dating system for the period. The rise of Delphi as colonial arbiter can also be related to the Lelantine War; for it is noticeable that the genuine surviving oracles belong to the foundations of Corinth, Chalcis and their friends, not to those of Eretria and the other side. So successful in fact were the colonies supported by Delphi that the lack of an oracle could lat
er be seen as a reason for the failure of an expedition (Herodotus 5.42); and cities without oracles tended to forge them.

  The number of colonists on most expeditions must have been small, perhaps 200 or less: cities were able to found as many as four or five colonies within a single generation; even the fourth century inscription for the foundation of Black Corcyra has space for only between 150 and 300 names. The settlers will have been unmarried men of fighting age, probably from families with more than one heir. They must have begun by fortifying their settlement and dividing the land, though no evidence has yet been found for fortifications as early as the first arrival. The ‘original allotment’ was the basis of the new colonial society; as with inheritance on the mainland, the distribution was by lot and ‘on fair and equal terms’. Archilochos told of Aithiops the Corinthian, who had gone as a colonist to Syracuse: on the voyage he had ‘exchanged the plot of land which he would be allotted on arrival, with the leader Archias for a honey-cake’ (Athenaeus 4.167d). This original allotment was the tangible evidence both of citizenship in the colony and later of membership of its inner group: Aristotle says that it was an old law in many cities that original allotments could not be sold, and he must be referring especially to colonial cities (Politics 5.1319a). The characteristics of these land distributions are visible in the configuration of some of the western sites. For the first time in Greece the various categories of land, public, private and religious were clearly separated: the archaic town plan of Megara Hyblaea in Sicily shows groups of streets in parallel, and rectilinear plots large enough for a house and garden enclosure; public land was apparently set aside from the beginning for temples and other buildings; the plan was not absolutely regular, but seems rather to depend on equality of plot size. In the settlement of Naxos, the temples within the city are oriented on a different grid plan from that used in a later redistribution of land, and clearly reflect the original division. The amount of land enclosed within the walls at other sites, such as Syracuse, Leontini, Agrigentum and Caulonia, suggests a similar ‘garden city’ layout, rather than the common Mediterranean type of the dormitory town with its crowded apartment blocks. Regular town plans have been discovered or suspected at five or six other sites; and although it is still uncertain how far they go back, the opposite point can at least be made, that no colonial site has yet produced evidence of an irregular original plan. Outside the city walls lay the immediate territory of the city, which must also have been divided among the first settlers; in the environs of Metapontum in south Italy are two ancient field systems with traces of parallel ditches, boundaries which perhaps also served for irrigation; they are 210 or 240 metres apart, and run for some 10 kilometres across the plain. Elsewhere, at Syracuse, Gela and Tarentum, it is noticeable that the central plain which was the original territory contains no signs of habitation, but is ringed by Greek villages which must belong to later comers. The first settlers thus became a colonial aristocracy, owning the best land closest to the city; this explains the common later government of the cities – a widely based cavalry aristocracy of some hundreds of families: thus a number of south Italian cities had ruling councils of a thousand, descended from the original colonists, and at Syracuse the aristocracy was known as the Gamoroi, ‘those who shared the land’.