Once a promising site had been found, the colonizing city had next to obtain divine approval. For the western colonies application was normally made to Apollo at Delphi; for the colonies on the Black Sea other oracles, such as that of Apollo of Branchidae, may have had a similar role. Although largely a formality - no case of an oracle’s withholding the divine assent is attested -, the step was rarely omitted. When the Lacedaemonian adventurer Dorieus in the late sixth century BC allegedly failed to ask for divine approval for an attempt to found a colony in North Africa, Herodotus emphasized this to explain the attempt’s eventual failure (Hdt. V 42). The importance of the step emerges from several late examples of colonization. When the Lacedaemonians founded the colony of Heracleia Trachinia in 424 BC, Thucydides records that Delphi officially sanctioned the undertaking (Thuc. III 92). When Ducetius, the heavily Hellenized leader of the (non-Greek) people of the Sicels on Sicily, decided to found colonies in the fifth century BC, he did so unsurprisingly according to the Greek model; and in at least one case, Calacte, he claimed to have received the approval of an oracle (Diod. XII 8,2).
Such approval in the end usually took the form of a command from Apollo to the colonist’s leader or to the colonizing city to found the colony (for example, in the foundation decree for Cyrene - see Box 5.1). Parallels exist for this type of reformulation of a request for approval into a direct order to carry out the proposal. Thus, in the fourth century BC when the city of Cyrene wished to carry out a series of cultic reforms, it sought approval from Delphi. The inscription in which these reforms were promulgated (Sokolowski, LSCG suppl., No. 115) begins with the words “Apollo spoke: That they may live in Libya making use of regulations for purity, consecration, and supplication forever.” These words are in Delphic dialect. There follow over 135 lines of exact regulations - this time in Cyrenaean dialect. That is to say, the entire document, as written in Cyrene, had been placed before Apollo’s priests at Delphi for approval who simply added the words quoted as a sort of preamble to indicate that Apollo indeed approved. The important point is that Apollo gave out as his own command what he had merely been requested to approve. So it will have been with the sources’ numerous “commands” to found a colony.
On a more human level - once divine approval was forthcoming - prospective colonists were chosen. In some cases prospective colonists volunteered. Poverty at home and the promise of a fresh start - with an allotment of land (see Box 5.3) - in the colony may have sufficed to attract volunteers. Thus the seventh-century BC poet Archilochus of Paros went out to the colony of Thasos, as he himself stated, because he was poor and did not know what else to do (Fr. 295 West).
Occasionally civil unrest at home may have motivated people to go abroad. At Sparta disturbances relating to a group of people called “Partheniae” appear to have caused the latter to be sent out to the colony of Taras in southern Italy circa 700 BC. (the date is based on the oldest finds from the site - see Coldstream, p. 239). Precise details, unfortunately, are irrecoverable (Ephorus, BNJ 70, Fr. 216 - with commentary). In the mid-sixth century Arcesilaus, a son of the King of Cyrene, quarreled with his brothers. Apparently a faction within Cyrene backed the latter, who then left with their supporters and founded the nearby colony of Barce (Hdt. IV 160).
In other cases compulsion became necessary. When the Therans sent out their colony to North Africa, they insisted that one man, selected by lot from each household on the island, join - under penalty of death (see Box 5.1). The reluctance to join should not surprise - the perils of a long voyage were real as were those posed by hostile peoples abroad; after all, many colonies (for example, the first settlements at Siris and Metapontum) failed. The Megarians who eventually settled Megara Hyblaea had previously been driven (by unspecified enemies) from two other sites, Trotilus on the River Pantacyas and Thapsus (see Box 5.2). Moreover, clearing land and making it arable was backbreaking labor as was building a new city from the ground up. Unlike Archilochus, many may have preferred poverty at home to perils and hard work abroad even if the latter did offer a chance at a better life.
Given the difficulties involved in finding people willing to go, “joint ventures” often enough took place with more than one community contributing colonists. Thus Gela, founded in the early seventh century on Sicily, had settlers from Rhodes and Crete (Thuc. VI 4). Sometimes the settlers already in a colony were willing to accept others in addition - clearly, a use could always be found for additional hands - as when the Chalcidians at Leontini received Megarian colonists who had been driven out from Trotilus (see Box 5.2).
Next, someone to lead out the colony had to be chosen. This was the oecist, the “founder.” It fell to him to make all necessary arrangements and to see to it that the colony was properly settled (see also Box 5.3). In the early period he remained in the colony, and when he died he was buried in the colony’s marketplace where his fellow colonists errected a shrine to him and where he ever after received heroic offerings (Hdt. VI 38; Thuc. V 11; Diod. XI 49 and 66). The choice of oecist was often a political one. He might be someone whom
Others at home wished to see gone; or he might be a trusted confidant of a city’s leader. To give an example of the former, when Cleomenes became King of Sparta circa 520 BC, his half-brother Dorieus had been a serious rival for the throne. Cleomenes presumably was happy to see Dorieus leave Sparta to found a colony a thousand miles away (Hdt. V 42). The colonies founded by the Corinthians during the tyranny of Cypselus give a good example of the latter phenomenon. Cypselus made his sons Pylades and Echiades the oecists of the colonies of Leucas and Anactorium respectively (Nicolaus of Damascus, BNJ 90, Fr. 57); the oecist of Potidaea, meanwhile, was Evagoras, the son of Cypselus’ successor in the Cypselid tyranny, Periander (Nicolaus of Damascus, BNJ 90, Fr. 59).
World History
