The motivations for relocation were various. In some cases, they seem to have been prompted by the expansionist policies of eastern empires. Three “waves” of Milesian colonization have been identified: the first in the second half of the seventh century (e. g. Sinope, Histria, Apollonia, and Amisos), the second in the first half of the sixth century (Tomis, Olbia), and the last around the middle of the same century (Odessos). The first two have been plausibly linked to Lydian aggression and the third to the rise of the Achaemenid Persian empire. In ca. 540, the Phocaeans, under siege from the Persian general Harpagos, decided to abandon their city; although roughly half of the population returned to Phocaea, the remainder set sail for the west, where they eventually founded Elea (Velia) in Italy (Herodotus 1.163-7). Similarly, it was apparently due to the “heavy pressure exerted by the kings in Asia” that Pentathlos led a mixed contingent of Cnidians and Rhodians in the 50th Olympiad (580-76). Upon arriving at Lilybaeum in western Sicily, the settlers took the side of Selinus in its war against Egesta, but Pentathlos was killed and three of his kinsmen continued on to the Aeolian islands, north of Sicily, where they founded Lipara (Diodorus 5.9; Strabo 6.2.10).
In recent decades, however, it has been almost a dogma of scholarship that the principal motivation for colonization was “land hunger.” The vast majority of overseas sites were, it is argued, chosen for their agricultural potential - the coinage of Metapontum even displayed an ear of wheat. The Theran account of the foundation of Cyrene mentions a seven-year drought (Herodotus 4.151.1), and the eventual location of the colony is chosen precisely because it is situated “where the sky is pierced” (4.158.3) - that is, a place that enjoys considerable rainfall (between 400 mm and 800 mm per annum in recent history). Oracular prophecies that colonies should be founded “where water falls from a clear sky” - associated with both Taras (Pausanias 10.10.6) and Croton (Scholiast to Aristophanes, Clouds 371) - seem to betray a similar concern with crop productivity. When evidence came to light for demographic growth in Greece during the eighth century (see pp. 80-1), the case appeared closed. There was simply not enough land in Greece to feed an expanding population. Those cities that did not control territories as vast as those of Athens or Sparta had little option but to send young men overseas in search of sustenance.
Yet it has been objected that emigration is not the only - nor even the most obvious - response to a shortage of land. Alternative strategies could have included birth control, abortion, or infanticide, delaying the marriageable age for women - thereby decreasing the fertility cycle - or an intensification of agricultural practices by which marginal land might be brought into cultivation. Nor, despite indications for demographic growth, is there any clearly visible evidence for overpopulation in mainland Greece during the eighth century. The territory of Corinth is far more fertile than was once believed and at around 900 square kilometers in the Classical period, it ranks among the larger hinterlands, yet there are few material indications for intensive habitation in the Corinthian countryside. Achaeans are credited with founding the earliest permanent settlements in South Italy, but the results of archaeological survey around the Achaean city of Dyme suggests that the zone was only sporadically settled until the sixth century. By contrast, the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf almost certainly did not have the agricultural capacity to feed its population and yet it did not feel the need to dispatch a colony until shortly after 520, when it took control of the Samian colony at Kydonia (modern Khania) on Crete (Herodotus 3.59.3) - according to Strabo (8.6.16), a later settlement was planted in Italian Umbria. To support themselves, the Aeginetans seem to have turned to what has euphemistically been described as “negative reciprocity” - i. e. piracy - but if Thucydides (1.5) is correct that piracy and brigandage were commonplace in the Archaic period, it would be strange that the idea should have occurred to the Aeginetans alone. Furthermore, if our calculations for the early population of Megara Hyblaea are correct, there was hardly the sort of exodus that would have significantly relieved overcrowded conditions at home.
Perhaps, however, this abstract matching of agricultural resources to population levels is not the most fruitful way to approach the issue. The demographic growth hypothesized for the eighth century may have been the consequence of declining mortality rates but there can be little doubt that it was precipitated above all by higher birth rates. In real terms, sons were more likely to have brothers in the later eighth century than at any time in the previous four centuries or so. In the Classical period, it was the norm for family property to be divided equally among male heirs. That this was also the case earlier - at least in some areas of Greece - finds confirmation in Hesiod’s description of his quarrel with his brother, Perses: “We divided the property between us, but you had your eyes set on seizing the larger part, bestowing excessive honors on the bribe-devouring nobles who love to adjudicate cases like this” (WD 37-9). It matters little whether or not Hesiod is here describing a genuine autobiographical episode: the admonitory tone of the poem as a whole would have lost its force had the supposed source of Hesiod’s indignation not been fairly commonplace. Elsewhere, Hesiod notes, “There should be an only son to nourish the paternal home for in this way wealth will increase in the household; if you leave behind a second son, you should die old” (376-7). Apart from the implication that having one son was - or should ideally be - the norm, Hesiod draws attention to the fact that since partible inheritance creates smaller, fragmented landholdings, fathers of more than one son should endeavor to work as hard, and for as long, as possible to ensure a greater inheritance. We may, perhaps, infer that Hesiod’s father had not heeded this advice and that it was for this reason that Perses seized a larger share of his property.
Smaller inheritances with reduced productivity could certainly offer one explanation as to why people should have moved, but resentment at what were perceived as inequitable divisions between siblings may account, at least in part, for why these new settlements were so far from home. After all, the earliest permanent settlement in the west, Pithecusae, is also one of the most distant from Greece. Such a pattern might explain Hesiod’s otherwise surprising failure to list siblings and their families when he warns that neighbors are likely to come to one’s aid sooner than kinsmen by marriage (344-5). If younger siblings chose to emigrate upon the death of their fathers and land lots were inherited in their entirety, it is far from certain that we should expect to identify major changes in the archaeology of the countryside.
For what it is worth, some hint of inheritance issues is discernible in the foundation stories. The traditions that the founders of Taras were either the sons of Spartans enslaved for “conscientious objection” (Antiochus) or born out of wedlock (Ephorus) may well be attempts to explain their name - the Partheniai - but that term in itself (from the Greek word for “virgin”) carries connotations of illegitimacy and hence disputed claims to inheritance. According to the Cyrenean account of the foundation of Cyrene, Battos was the son of a Cretan princess whose moral virtue was questioned and who was sent to Thera to become the concubine (pallake) of a Theran aristocrat (Herodotus 4.154-55). Battos’ social marginality is signified metaphorically by a speech impediment, and a similar status may be implied in the accounts concerning Myskellos, the founder of Croton, whose name literally means “hunchbacked.” Indeed, Diodorus’ account (8.17) of the oracular consultation that commanded Myskellos to found Croton finds several parallels with Battos’ consultation of the Delphic oracle, as recorded by the Cyreneans (Herodotus 4.155-57). Such formulaic similarities within the genre of foundation stories do little to commend their independent credibility.
However, Hesiod tells us that his father emigrated from Aeolian Cyme, on the coast of Asia Minor, to the village of Ascra in Boeotia, not only to escape poverty but also because he was “desirous of a good life” (WD 634). It is clear that it was not just necessity that impelled Greek-speakers to seek new homes overseas but also the realization that better opportunities awaited them there.
That cultivatable land was included among these opportunities can hardly be doubted but there are also indications that commercial interests were not insignificant. This is most obviously the case with the port of trade that Greek merchants set up at Naucratis, in the western Nile delta, in the last quarter of the seventh century (see pp. 268-72), but evidence from an industrial complex on the Mezzavia ridge at Pithecusae suggests that the early occupants of the site were processing and perhaps also extracting iron ores from the island of Elba. The finished products, which certainly included fibulae, were probably designed for markets in the east where they could be exchanged for the Levantine luxury goods found in some of the tombs at Pithecusae. It is not that the Greeks lacked iron ore deposits back in the Aegean but it has been suggested that wealth generated from within the home community was, in this period, under an obligation to be redistributed to members of that community. Wealth generated overseas, on the other hand, was not subject to the same redistributive expectations, allowing for a considerable accumulation of capital. Presumably, emigres were not held responsible either for the failings of their prodigal elder brothers.
Many of the sites in the west certainly offered vast agricultural resources - Leontini, Syracuse, Sybaris, and Metapontum in particular. But other sites, such as Naxos, are not blessed with vast territories and in the case of Zancle and Rhegium, strategically located either side of the Straits of Messina, or Chalcedon and Byzantium, on the European and Asian shores of the Bosphorus, it is clear that the chief preoccupation was with shipping routes. Economic considerations are generally considered to have been a key factor behind the Phocaean communities in the far west. That the same may be true of many settlements in the Black Sea region is suggested strongly by the case of Sinope, where there is little evidence for trade or settlement in the hinterland for the first two centuries of the site’s existence. While the northern shores of the Black Sea were an important source of grain for the city of Athens in the Classical period, archaeological and palaeobotanical evidence suggests that agricultural exploitation in this region does not predate the fifth century.
The underplaying, in earlier literature, of commercial motivations as a key catalyst for colonization is probably due to two factors. In the first place, the earlier assumption that there was “trade before the flag” has been challenged on the grounds that such a conception owed more to British imperial policies than it did to the world of Greek settlements overseas. In the second, the work of Moses Finley in particular has popularized the view that the ancient economy was based primarily on agriculture and that commercial interests were of comparatively minor significance (see pp. 261-2). But recent reappraisals suggest that the ancient economy was not quite as “primitive” as Finley believed, while the notion of there being “trade before the flag” is not vitiated because there was no trade but because there was - at least initially - no flag. When we examine the evidence, unencumbered by presuppositions derived from later colonial activity, the picture that emerges is one of a less official, less formal, and more haphazard movement of various peoples for various reasons over a number of generations - in short, of a process that was not so qualitatively different from those earlier movements that followed the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces.
World History
