It is worthwhile to differentiate here among the Dark Age relocations, the Archaic colonization, and the expansion of Greece under the Hellenistic empires. The colonization in the Archaic Age was an outcome of the polis-based society, whereby a specific polis sent off a colony to a specific region. Afterward, theoretically, the colony maintained at least religious, if not political and legal, links with the founding polis. This differs from the Dark Age migrations, when the homeland was usually abandoned entirely, and from the Hellenistic expansion, when political units greater than the individual poleis were at work (Graham 1983, 1).
The first Greek colonies were to the west of Greece, in Italy and Sicily. The first was Pithekoussai, on the island of Ischia just off the western coast of central Italy, which was settled around 750 b. c.e. Ancient literary sources claim that it was settled by a combined party from Erefria and Chalkis, apparently before these cities fought each other in the Lelantine War. However, both the population as presented in the cemeteries (5,000-10,000 persons, too many deaths to have come from just two cities) and the various scripts and art styles prevalent on the island reveal that colonists came from various parts of the Greek world. The main attraction of Pithekoussai was the prospect of wealth from trade, as the island was too small to offer much agricultural potential. But the site was defensible and was ideally situated to conduct trade with the Etruscans of central Italy. The Greeks probably received metals from the Etruscans in exchange for copious amounts of Greek goods, especially pottery. The Etruscans loved Greek pottery, and the eighth century b. c.e. marked a turning point in Etruscan culture as well as Greek, for from this point, elements of Greek (and Phoenician) art and culture flooded the Italian peninsula.
Henceforth, there was a continual relocation of Greeks to Italy and Sicily, followed by further (and farther) colonization efforts in the later Archaic Age, settling Greeks as far afield as southern France, Libya, Egypt, and the Ukraine. Information about the creation of individual colonies is difficult to ascertain, as many foundation legends were created as late as centuries after the actual foundings of the colonies, and these legends were often influenced by political interests or literary romanticism. Nevertheless, certain aspects of colonization do seem to be fairly well established and consistent. Ideally, it was thought, the move to colonize should be approved by the deities, preferably the oracular god Apollo. So a mother city, or metropolis (from the Greek words meter = mother and polis = city), would send to, say, the sanctuary at Delphi to find out if they should send a colony to a particular site. If the answer was unfavorable, the city could keep sending consultation parties to the deity until they got a better answer. Next, a person, the oikistes, would be placed in charge of the colony's founding. The colonists would then set out, either establishing themselves in an uninhabited land, conquering the indigenous population, or simply cohabitating with the previous inhabitants. There was no guilt associated with overcoming a native population, as the enterprise was religiously sanctioned by Apollo. To confirm the "Greekness" and sanctity of the new city, a fire sacred to Hestia, the hearth goddess, would be brought from the mother city to the colony. From this point, ideally, the oikistes would set up a system of government in the colony. As early as Homer's time, these responsibilities were spelled out:
Then leaving, godlike Nausithoos led them,
And he went to Skheria, far from bread-eating men,
And he established a wall for the city, and built houses and made temples of the deities, and he allotted the shares. (Odyssey 2, 7-10)
And so a new Greek city was created. This drive to inhabit new regions was very strong in the later eighth century, and the Greeks established new colonies in Italy and Sicily about every other year from 730 to 700 b. c.e. Eventually, southern Italy and Sicily came to be known as Magna Graecia, or Big Greece. Some cities were extremely active in colonization, such as Chalkis on Euboia and Miletos on the Ionian coast. Others, like Athens, only started colonizing in the later Archaic Age, occasionally stealing land from other cities' colonies. Sparta was unique in that, rather than establishing colonies to solve its land shortage problem, it simply took over and enslaved its next-door neighbor, Messenia. The only Spartan colony was at Taras (later Tarentum) in southern Italy. According to legend, one year when all the Spartan men were at war, their wives at home all got pregnant by the domestic servants. At a loss as to what to do with these partial citizens who were, nevertheless, half-slaves, the Spartans sent them off in 706 b. c.e. to colonize Italy. The inhabitants of Taras were known as Partheniai, those "Born of Maidens."
By the end of the Archaic Age, Greece had developed the political and social systems that typified it for the next several centuries. It was a culturally, religiously, and linguistically cohesive region covering much of the eastern Mediterranean and divided up into poleis, all autonomous and mostly independent of each other. It would take the intrusions of a foreigner in the fifth century b. c.e., however, to get this massive Greek system to come together to act as a unified force.
World History
