Not all colonies survived. Antiochus of Syracuse, who in the late fifth century bc wrote an account of the Greek colonies in the West, mentions failed colonies at both Siris and Metapontum in southern Italy before a second attempt at colonization of those sites succeeded (BNJ 555, Fr. 12). The following passage from Thucydides recounts the difficulties suffered by Megarian colonists who arrived in Sicily circa 730 bc. They founded two failed colonies before finally succeeding with the foundation of Megara Hyblaea. The passage is also interesting since it gives evidence for friendship between Greek colonists and the indigenous inhabitants; moreover, the people who drove the Megarian colonists from the first two sites of Trotilus and Thapsus may well have been other Greeks - the text itself remains silent on this point.
Thuc. VI 4,1-2
At about the same time Lamis also arrived in Sicily leading out a colony from Megara, and he both settled a certain place called Trotilus on the other side of the Pantacyas River and later on (moved) from there to live with the Chalcidians at Leontini for a brief time. He was driven out by them and founded Thapsus too before dying. But the others driven from Thapsus founded the so-called Hyblaean Megara when Hyblon, the king of the Sicels, handed over land and brought them to it. Now they lived there for two hundred and forty-five years until Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse, drove them from their city and their land. But before their expulsion, one hundred years after their own foundation, they sent out Pamillus and established Selinus. Now Pamillus came to them from Megara, which was their mother-city, and carried out the foundation together with them.
This excerpt comes from a section of Thucydides (VI 1-5) which speaks of the settlement of all the Greek colonies on Sicily. Stylistically, this section of Thucydides is somewhat unusual as in it Thucydides uses phrases and constructions which depart markedly from his normal practice. Moreover, the perspective of the entire section is that of a native Sicilian, in particular a Syracusan - as can be seen even in this small excerpt. First, there is the use of dates relative to Syracuse. The foundation of Megara Hyblaea takes place 245 years before Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse, destroys it (somewhere between circa 485 and 480 bc - see Hdt. VII 156) - i. e., the relative dates are anchored to an absolute date in the history of Syracuse; that is to say that the reader is expected to know about when Gelon destroyed Megara Hyblaea and thus to be able to work from that. Second, there is the location of Trotilus "on the other side of the river." That wording presupposes a fixed point of reference, i. e., Syracuse, from which the author writes. The author might have phrased it neutrally (e. g., "north of the River Pantacyas"), but Syracuse as a fixed point of reference came naturally to him as well as to his prospective readers who knew the topography of Sicily in relation to Syracuse and therefore understood what "on the other side" of such-and-such a landmark meant. In a word, Thucydides in all likelihood is here incorporating material from none other than Antiochus of Syracuse (mentioned in the opening sentences of this box).
Figure 5.2 Ortygia, the former island, on which Syracuse lay. Source: photo © Tips Images/Tips Italia Srl a socio unico/Alamy
A settlement of the Corinthians circa 730 BC, initially lay on the island of Ortygia (“Quail Island” - see Figure 5.2) in the harbor of the later city (Thuc. VI 3,2). Pithecussae (“Monkey Island”), settled by Chalcidians and Eretrians circa 775 BC (based on the earliest archaeological finds), lay on an island in the bay of Naples (Livy, VIII 22,5-6; Strab. V 4,9, p. 247); some years later the settlers transferred the colony to Cumae on the mainland (Thuc. VI 4,5; Liv. l. c.). Zancle, founded circa 700 BC on the Sicilian side of the Strait of Messina, lay on a sickle-shaped promontory (see Figure 5.3). This colony is better known under its later name Messene which it received when Anaxilas, the tyrant of Rhegium, seized the city in the early fifth century (Paus. IV 23). He was a
Figure 5.3 The site of Zancle/Messene. Source: Stefano Barilla, Http://en. wikipedia. org/ Wiki/File:Messina_harbour_-_aerial_view. jpg (accessed 14 January 2013) CC-BY-SA-3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0
Descendant of Messenians who settled in Rhegium after the first Messenian War (see chap. 6). The Euboean colonies in the Chalcidice, settled in the eighth century BC, lay exclusively on the three prongs protruding from the mainland; each prong was easily defensible against attacks from the mainland.
Finally, there was the matter of a site’s suitability for trade. Many colonies lay on or near trade-routes. Thus, Rhegium and Zancle/Messene (both founded circa 700 BC) lay on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina which separates Sicily from Italy. All traffic between the western coast of Italy and Greece flowed through this strait. The island of Corcyra lay in the Ionian Sea to the northwest of Greece proper. The route from Greece to Italy passed by Corcyra since in the ancient world navigation was often a matter of hugging the shore with mariners loath to be out of sight of land for any length of time. For this reason ships bound from Greece to Italy sailed up the eastern shore of the Ionian Sea and made the crossing over to Italy at the southern end of the Adriatic Sea where the passage is briefest. Corcyra and other colonies commanded this route: farther to the south lay additional Corinthian colonies such as Leucas,
Ambracia, and Anactorium; to the north, there where ships headed westwards to Italy, lay the Corcyraean colony of Epidamnus.
Now all of this need not mean that colonists chose a site primarily because it lay on a trade-route. One could explain the location of colonies on such routes by noting that potential colonists, when they tried to find out about promising sites, spoke with traders who naturally enough told their questioners of those sites which lay on the trade-routes. All the same, it is difficult to believe that considerations of trade played no role whatsoever in choosing the site.
The curious case of two colonies founded by the Megarians in the seventh century, Byzantium and Chalcedon, best illustrates the matter. Both these cities lay to the north of the Propontis on the Bosporus with Chalcedon on the Asian side and Byzantium on the European side on the site of the later Constantinople (the modern Istanbul). Now the Megarians founded Chalcedon first (Hdt. IV 144). It lay at a spot where the currents made the approach by sea difficult, and it had no good harbor. Yet the fishing was apparently good (Gellius, Attic Nights, VI 16,5), and this may well have persuaded the Megarians to found a colony there. If the colonists had little to fear from the indigenous peoples, so much the better. Yet across the strait lay the site of Byzantium with its splendid harbor towards which the current bore ships naturally (Strab. VII 6,2, p. 320). When the Persian commander Megabazus (see Hdt. l. c.), while passing through the region, learned that Chalcedon had been founded seventeen years before Byzantium, he said that the Megarians must have been blind - why would anyone have chosen the site of Chalcedon for a city when a far, far better place lay across the strait within view? Megabazus’ question, however, presupposes that considerations of trade lay uppermost in the settlers’ minds. The realization that that was not the case explains the settlers’ actions. Chalcedon had ready access to a supply of food (fish) and, assuming that the indigenous inhabitants were well disposed, may have been the better site for a colony - initially. For the fact remains that seventeen years after the foundation of Chalcedon the Megarians settled the site of Byzantium as well.
In those seventeen years much might have happened to make the settlement of Byzantium feasible. The settlers at Chalcedon might have taken up contact with the indigenous inhabitants on the European side of the strait and so made the peaceful founding of a new colony possible. The contact between the Theran settlers (who after two years on Platea had moved to the mountainous headland of Aziris on the mainland) and the indigenous inhabitants provides a model for such negotiations - for only after such contacts did the Theran settlers move to the site of Cyrene (Hdt. IV 158). To make another suggestion: other circumstances might have caused previous occupants of the site of Byzantium to leave. For example, settlers from Euboea and nearby islands such as Andros had settled the three prongs of the Chalcidice in the eighth century BC. Those three prongs did not have much arable land. Good land lay just to the north, but non-Greek tribes held that land. So the Greek colonists let discretion be the better part of valor and refrained from any attempt to move northwards - until the previous occupants themselves left. Thus, the Greeks at Sane at the northern end of Athos immediately pounced on the site of Acanthus just to the north when they learned that those who had been dwelling there had for reasons of their own left (Plut. Greek Questions, 30). Full-scale expansion into the land north of the three prongs, however, did not begin until the early fifth century BC - after the Persians had destroyed the tribe of the Bottiaeans which had held much of the region (Hdt. VIII 127).
Any such scenario can explain why the Greeks declined to settle the splendid site of Byzantium initially, but later on - when presumably it was safe so to do - founded a colony there. Here one sees best the interplay between secondary considerations of trade and the primary considerations of food and safety. The latter two were paramount when choosing a site; the former, although desirable, was an optional extra.
World History
