We are relatively well informed as to the nature of colonizing ventures in the fifth century. An inscribed bronze plaque, found at Galaxidhi on the northern shore of the Corinthian Gulf and probably dating to 500-470, sets out the regulations governing an East Locrian colony at Naupactus (ML 13 = Fornara 47). The colonists are to retain certain religious prerogatives in their original community, though without fiscal liabilities. In extreme circumstances, the right of return to East Locris is provided for (as long as no taxes are outstanding in Naupac-tus), and the colonists have to swear not to rebel against the Locrians. In the case of colonists who die with no heirs in Naupactus, the inheritance passes to the nearest of kin in East Locris while property in Locris may be bequeathed to a colonist in Naupactus. Violations of these conditions are to be punished with the loss of citizen-rights and the confiscation of property, with similar penalties applying to magistrates who refuse to grant trials. Somewhat later, in the third quarter of the fifth century, another inscription describes the foundation of an Athenian colony at Brea in Thrace under the direction of a man named Demokleides (ML 49 = Fornara 100). Provisions are taken for the distribution of land and for the reservation of precincts dedicated to the gods. The colony is to be founded within thirty days of the decree, though enrolled colonists who are currently away on military service are given thirty days to emigrate after their return to Athens, and the settlers are to be conscripted from the Zeugitai and the Thetes (the two lowest property classes at Athens: see pp. 175-6). Those who propose a reversal or modification of the conditions are subject to loss of citizen-rights and confiscation of property.
If the provisions set out in these two fifth-century decrees perpetuate habitual practices that date back to the flurry of colonial activity in the eighth century, then we would have to conclude that colonization was significantly different from earlier migratory movements in that it was more formally organized, more strictly regulated, and undertaken after considerably more advanced planning. Furthermore, it would suggest that colonization involved, from the outset, a direct and generally exclusive relationship between a single founding-city (metropolis) and its colony (apoikia) - something that is less apparent in the literary traditions for migrations. It is not, however, clear that earlier colonial ventures did operate along similar lines to those that are better attested in the Classical period. Certainly the expeditions that planted the Achaean colonies in South Italy cannot have been as formal or as organized as the Athenian settlement at Brea since the sorts of political and administrative structures normally associated with the polis are barely, if at all, attested in Peloponnesian Achaea prior to the fifth century.
Considerable attention has been given to a fourth-century decree from Cyrene (ML 5 = Fornara 18). The specific occasion for the decree was a proposal granting equal rights of citizenship to newly arrived settlers from Thera, but this proposal was justified on the grounds that the terms of the original settlement of Cyrene, in the later seventh century, had made provisions for the distribution of property to future colonists. The inscription then proceeds to record what it claims is the oath of the first Theran colonists of Cyrene. At the behest of Apollo, the Theran assembly decided to dispatch freeborn citizens under the command and rule of a man named Battos, with one son being conscripted from every family. Were the colony to prove successful, kinsmen of the original settlers would be permitted to sail to Libya where they would receive citizen-rights and a plot of unassigned land. The colonists were to persevere for five years to ensure the success of the settlement, but if ultimately unsuccessful, they would have been permitted to return to Thera and reclaim their citizen-rights there. Anybody who was conscripted and refused to sail - or who harbored somebody who refused to sail - would have been executed and have had his property confiscated. The inscription concludes by noting that both the colonists and those who remained on Thera swore an oath to uphold these provisions and invoked curses against transgressors.
The authenticity of the “original” oath cited in this decree has been the subject of much discussion. That the language adopted displays some seemingly “archaic” elements is not in itself surprising and can hardly preclude the possibility that it is a forgery. One might, perhaps, have expected even more of an emphasis on the privileges due to later arrivals had the oath been fabricated in the fourth century but, then again, it is a little surprising that a genuine foundation document did not make provisions for a whole range of issues that would have been irrelevant to the immediate concerns of fourth-century settlers. Some doubts have recently been expressed concerning Herodotus’ comment (4.155.2) that the name Battos was a Libyan royal title, but had the name Battos been so indelibly associated with Cyrene’s founder by the fifth century, it is strange that Pindar (Pyth. 5.87) should have chosen to identify him as a certain Aris-toteles. Certain details mentioned in the inscription - for example, the spontaneous command from Apollo, the selection of one son/brother per family, and the appointment of Battos as leader of the colonists - find parallels in the version of the foundation story that Herodotus (4.150-53) claims to have heard from the Therans, and this should almost certainly rule out the possibility that the oath cited in the decree was an invention of the fourth century. On the other hand, the fact that this was the tradition that was circulating on Thera in the fifth century does not in itself prove that the details had been faithfully remembered and transmitted from the time of the actual foundation.
The problem is that the earliest extant accounts of colonial foundations are invariably late. Archilochus (fr. 102) describes the settlement of Thasos and shows some familiarity with the fertile territory around the Colophonian colony of Siris in South Italy (fr. 22), but accounts that offer any details for colonial foundations in the west rarely appear before the time of Antiochus of Syracuse towards the end of the fifth century. Even then, such details as are recorded are hardly exhaustive. The provenance of the first settlers is normally given, but no oikistes (founder) is named for around one quarter of the thirty or so colonial foundations in South Italy and Sicily. Consultation of the Delphic oracle is mentioned for just five colonies (Croton, Gela, Rhegium, Syracuse, and Taras) while the act of dividing territory receives no treatment, save for the anecdote, recorded by Archilochus (fr. 293), that the Corinthian Aithiops exchanged his lot of land in Syracuse for a honey-cake. It might be thought that the scarcity of information to be found in the literary accounts of foundation actually argues in favor of their historicity: later inventions, it is reasoned, would have fleshed out the bare bones of the tradition with more succulent details. Yet the problem is not just that details are sketchy but that such details as there are frequently vary between sources.
Consider the case of Megara Hyblaea, near the modern industrial port of Augusta in eastern Sicily. Thucydides (6.4.1-2) says that it was founded 245 years before its destruction at the hands of Gelon of Syracuse (728 in our terms). The colonists were Megarians from mainland Greece, originally led by Lamis, who had been unsuccessful in earlier attempts to settle Trotilon, Leon-tini, and Thapsos (where he died). But Eusebius (Chron.) dates the foundation thirty years earlier; the second-century CE writer Polyaenus (Strat. 5.5) places the foundation of Trotilon after, not before, Leontini; and Ephorus (fr. 137) and pseudo-Scymnus (277) both say that the Megarians who founded Megara Hyblaea were led, not by Lamis, but by a man named Theokles. According to Thucydides (6.3.1-2), Theokles was the founder of Naxos, Leontini, and Catana and he seems to have been regarded as a Chalcidian, though two Byzantine lexica say he was from Eretria (Suda, s. v. elegeinein; Etymologicum Magnum 327.6-10) while for Ephorus (fr. 137) and pseudo-Scymnus (270-7) he was an Athenian.
Alternative founders are attested for a number of western colonies, especially on the Italian mainland. The fourth-century coins of Metapontum represent the colony’s founder as a certain Leukippos, though Daulios of Crisa is named as oikistes by Ephorus (fr. 141), while the honor is attributed to Epeios by the third-century CE geographer Solinus (2.10) and in Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus’ HistoriaePhilippicae (20.2). Divergent foundation dates are also offered: Syracuse is dated to 733 by Thucydides (6.4.2) but to 757 by the third-century Parian Marble; the Sicilian city of Selinus was founded in 628 according to Thucydides (6.4.2) but in 650 according to Diodorus (13.59); and the Italian city of Cumae is said by Strabo (5.4.4) to have been the oldest foundation in the west - Eusebius (Chron.) actually dated it to ca. 1050 - but Livy (8.22.6) maintains that it was established after Pithecusae. Even the origin of the first settlers does not always meet with consensus: the foundation of Locri is variously attributed to East Locrians (Ephorus fr. 138), West Locrians (Strabo 9.4.9), and even Spartans (Pausanias 3.3.1), while Himera is said to be a secondary foundation of either Zancle and Syracuse (Thucydides 6.5.1), Catana and Kallipolis (pseudo-Scymnus 289-90), or Mylai (Strabo 6.2.6).
Particularly intriguing in this respect are the “double foundations” recorded for the so-called “Achaean” colonies of south Italy. Antiochus (frs. 10, 12) attributed the foundations of Metapontum, Sybaris, and Croton to Achaeans from the geographical region of Achaea in the northern Peloponnese. In the case of Croton, he also tells us that the expedition was ordained by the Delphic Oracle and entrusted to a man named Myskellos, who set out for the west in the company of Arkhias, the founder of Syracuse. According to Strabo (8.7.5), Myskellos originated from the Achaean city of Rhypes, while the oikistes of Sybaris was a certain Is from the nearby city of Helike (6.1.15). Pausanias (6.3.12) reports that Caulonia was established by Typhon of Aegium - though pseudo-Scymnus (318-19) and Solinus (2.10) regarded it as a secondary foundation of Croton - and Poseidonia was said to have been settled by Achaeans from Sybaris (Strabo 5.3.13).
Yet these colonists from Achaea were not believed to have been the first Greeks to settle Italian shores. According to Strabo (6.1.12), Greeks returning from the Trojan War (i. e. Achaeans in a Homeric, rather than a geographic, sense) were shipwrecked on the Italian coast and forced to settle in the territory of Croton. The hinterland of Croton was also associated with the Homeric hero Philoctetes (6.1.3), while an earlier settlement of Metapontum was attributed to Pylians sailing back from Troy with the garrulous Nestor (6.1.15). It is easy to see why historians should have dismissed these heroic foundations as fictitious fables but they are not, as is often supposed, the inventions of late mythog-raphers. The tradition that Metapontum had been founded by veterans returning from Troy was already known to the early fifth-century lyric poet Bacchylides (11.114-23) and the specification that these were Pylians should probably be understood in terms of the hostility between Metapontum and the neighboring city of Siris, whose founding-city, Colophon, considered itself a colony of Pylos (Mimnermus fr. 9). This simultaneous appeal to Pylian origins can only really have arisen in the relatively brief period between the foundation of Metapontum ca. 630 and the sack of Siris in the mid-sixth century. The fact that traditions ascribing Italian foundations to Homeric heroes were elaborated at a relatively early date is not, of course, sufficient reason for taking them seriously. But neither does their relegation necessarily guarantee, by default, the veracity of the alternative foundation traditions concerning Is, Myskellos, and Typhon, that are first recorded by authors writing more than a century later.
In assessing the historicity of these foundation stories, it is legitimate to ask exactly how the memory of episodes that were supposed to have taken place in the eighth and seventh centuries was accurately preserved over approximately 300 years. The point is not that the ability to memorize lists is unusual in predominantly oral societies but that, if this were common practice among the western Greeks, it would markedly differentiate them from their Aegean cousins, who appear to have been totally incapable of remembering events from so early a period. It is, for example, revealing that Herodotus (3.122.2), though aware of tales concerning the naval power of mythical figures such as Minos of Crete, concedes that the late sixth-century tyrant of Samos, Polycrates, was “the first Greek that we know made plans to rule over the seas.” The idea of dating events to the tenure of political or religious office was already well established in the sixth century: an inscription from Eretria (IG XII 9.1273-74) dates a law to the archonship of a certain Tollos, while a document from the sanctuary of Aphaea on Aegina (IG IV 1580) refers to construction-work undertaken during the priesthood of Kleoitas. It is not, however, entirely certain that sequential lists of office-holders were common in this period. An inscription from Argos (IG IV 614), dated to 575-550, names nine damiourgoi but it is probably a case of a board of concurrently-serving officials rather than a consecutive list of annual magistrates. In any event, it was not until the later fifth century that antiquarians attempted to extend these rosters back into the eighth century and beyond. As we have seen (p. 30), a list of Athenian archons was set up in the Athenian agora ca. 425. Shortly afterwards, Hellanicus of Mytilene published his list of the priestesses of Hera at Argos and Hippias of Elis compiled the first complete list of Olympic victors stretching back to the supposed inaugural games of 776. In both cases, it is clear that imaginative guesswork, rather than consultation of written records, supplemented local memory, dedicatory inscriptions, and family genealogies. It is within this context of an awakened interest in chronography that we should situate the antiquarian works of Antiochus.
It has been argued that the nature of historical consciousness was, in fact, different in the colonial setting because of the risks involved and the trauma suffered in braving the seas and establishing settlements in hostile territory. In some colonies we hear that the founder was buried in the agora and received heroic offerings after his death, and it is suggested that the details of the original foundation were recited at these annually enacted rituals - an ancient equivalent to Independence Day celebrations in the United States. Such annual occasions, the argument continues, would also have allowed the colony’s inhabitants to keep an accurate tally of the years that had elapsed since the settlement was founded. There are, however, three difficulties with this theory.
Firstly, if an “official” foundation account was recited annually in a formal setting and transmitted from generation to generation, we would expect to find considerably less variety in the literary traditions with respect to specific details than is actually the case. Secondly, there is very little evidence to support the idea that founders received heroic honors from the moment of their death. Literary testimony is invariably late - we have to wait until the time of Livy (40.4.9) to hear of an annually ordained sacrifice in honor of Aeneas at Aineia in the Chalcidice - and the archaeological evidence is not particularly informative. What has been identified as a hero-shrine in the northwestern sector of Megara Hyblaea (Figure 5.2) postdates the foundation of the colony by about a century, while it is by no means certain that an underground chamber at Poseidonia, dating to 520-500, has any connection with a hero cult to the city’s founder. Similarly, cult is not attested to Antiphemos at Gela until the fifth century, when his name appears as part of a dedicatory offering on an Attic kylix (drinking cup). The most plausible occurrence of heroic honors comes from Cyrene, where an offering platform in association with a cremation burial
Figure 5.2 Heroon at Megara Hyblaea. Source: photo by author
Of ca. 600 is probably to be linked to Pindar’s claim that Battos “lies in death, apart, on the edges of the agora” (Pyth. 5.93-95). It would, however, be injudicious to generalize from so few examples.
Thirdly, there are good reasons for supposing that the foundation dates assigned to colonies by ancient authors were computed not on the basis of annual commemorative festivals but on an approximate count of generations. Thucydides (6.4-5) notes that Megara Hyblaea existed for 245 years, while Acrae was founded seventy years after Syracuse: both figures are almost certainly based on a thirty-five year generation (the fact that other authors appear to calculate the dates for other foundations on the basis of different generational calculations does not, in itself, invalidate the hypothesis). Generational computation is, of course, less accurate and more artificial than annual calculation but - far more importantly - it is invariably projected backwards from a later date. This only goes to strengthen the suspicion that it was not until the fifth century that ancient authors began to take an interest in civic foundations. This is not to say that such accounts were entirely fictitious, but we should be aware that what gets “remembered” in later periods may often have more to do with justifying the present order than with preserving an accurate account of the past for its own sake. Given our inability to distinguish between hard facts and invented traditions in foundation accounts, agnosticism is to be preferred to credulity.
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