Greek colony

“ One of the western offshoots built Athens and Sparta, and became the Greek nation; another went on to Italy, and reared the city on the Seven Hills, which grew into Imperial Rome. A distant colony of the same race excavated the silver ores of prehistoric Spain; and when we first catch a sight of ancient England, we see an Aryan settlement fishing in wattle canoes, and working the tin mines of Cornwall. Meanwhile other branches of the Aryan stock had gone forth from the primitive Asiatic home to the east. ”

“ The later colony acknowledges a definite metropolis (“mother-city”) ; it is planted by a definite oecist (οἰκιστής) ; it has a definite date assigned to its foundation.9 It would be a mistake to regard Greek colonization as commercial in origin, in the sense that the colonies were in all cases established as trading-posts. ”

“ The colonies, the settlements, the plantations of the newer world whose range of settlement has been the Ocean have been mainly settlements of subjects who set forth from kingdoms. Hence, while in almost every other point the two systems of settlement are so wonderfully alike, in all those points which immediately follow from this essential deference they stand utterly aloof from each other. The men who planted Greater Greece—whether we mean thereby the land once really so called or any other part of the Greek colonial world—were citizens of cities. ”

“ We can see how the once less-important races in Greece now come into the foreground of history; how they set up new kingdoms by the right of conquest on the ruins of the old, and bring into prominence their own special ways of thinking. Colonization over a wide area meant the expansion of Greek life; while the colonies themselves, as is so often the case, traversed all the stages of development at a much faster rate. Commerce and industry developed, calling forth and satisfying new demands. ”

“ The vast number of the Greek colonies, their wide-spread diffusion over all parts of the Mediterranean, which thus became a kind of Grecian lake, and their rapid growth in wealth, power, and intelligence, afford the most striking proofs of the greatness of this wonderful people. Civil dissensions and a redundant population were the chief causes of the origin of most of the Greek colonies. ”

“ If we would form an adequate conception of the nation’s influence, we must take into account the numerous Greek colonies which were planted in Asia Minor and on the southern shore of the Black Sea, on the coast of Macedonia, along the Hellespont and Bosporus, and also in Sicily and Italy, where a new Greek world sprang up, which received the name of Magna Græcia. ”

“ In the west, on the contrary, as we have already seen, Greek colonization has, since late antiquity, extended up into the interior, and the consequences of this have been felt even up to the present time, or, at any rate, have been made anew noticeable, owing to the fact that the Greeks of the west coast have for several decades been pressing farther and more vigorously into the interior, and have settled there more definitely. ”

“ The modern Greek nation, meaning thereby something more than the inhabitants either of the existing Greek kingdom or of the continuous Hellas of old times, is the fruit of old Greek colonization, followed up by Macedonian conquest. I said years ago that Alexander was the founder of the modern Greek nation, and I say so still. This saying may seem to shut out the work of earlier Greek colonization, above all in those lands of Sicily and southern Italy which we have spoken of as having been admitted by adoption within the immediate Greek world. ”

“ In the East, too, Greek cities were dotted along the coast of Page 22 the Black Sea, one of which, Byzantium, was destined to be of world-historic importance. So, too, in North Africa, and among the islands of the Ægean Sea, the Greeks colonised throughout the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., and in almost every case communication was kept up between the colonies and the mother-country. ”

“ Long before the Homeric poems were composed, love of adventure, quickened perhaps by pressure from the North, had driven the Achaeans and other kindred tribes forth from the mainland of Greece to find fresh homes in the islands and on the eastern shores of the Aegean. Other tribes, Aeolians, Ionians, Dorians, followed, and for centuries the stream of colonization flowed eastwards, carrying Greek civilization to every part of the Aegean. This civilization gathered fresh life from contact with the East. ”

“ The two colonies, north of the Akrokeraunian promontory, and on the coast-land of the Illyrian tribes,—Apollonia and Epidamnus,—were formed chiefly by the Korkyræans, yet with some aid and a portion of the settlers from Corinth, as well as from other Doric towns. Especially it is to be noticed, that the œkist was a Corinthian and a Herakleid, Phalius the son of Eratokleidês,—for, according to the usual practice of Greece, whenever a city, itself a colony, founded a sub-colony, the œkist of the latter was borrowed from the mother-city of the former. ”

“ The history of the other continental states is more or less involved in that of Sparta and Athens; but before entering upon the Persian wars, we will take a rapid survey of those foreign settlements which afforded an outlet for the enterprise and the crowded population of the Hellenic peninsula. In very early times, colonies were led forth from Greece by leaders who were afterward worshiped as heroes in the states they founded. Fire, the emblem of civilization, was carried from the prytaneum of the mother city, and placed upon the new hearth-stone of the colony. ”

“ No one in the cantons of the Greek peninsula roused themselves to give aid to an important section of the Greek nation, to the colonies which had outstripped the mother country in their development, or strove to save the most vigorous centres of Greek nationality from subjection to a foreign people, which had come out of the remote part of Asia. ”

“ In the two preceding centuries, the mother cities of Achæan and Dorian Greece had been sending out colonists east and west, not merely in a spirit of Phœnician commercialism, but also with adventuresome, intellectual curiosity. The heroes of their earliest traditional literature sailed with them. Associations half slumbering in the popular consciousness thrilled them as they steered again over the course of the Argo or as they followed once more the later track of Odysseus to the west, and in lower Italy and Sicily reëstablished Great Hellas as an integral part of Hellenic civilization. ”

“ We know that the colonists carefully preserved the Greek civilization, cultivated the arts of their mother cities, repeated the poems of Homer as they marched to battle, loved eloquent speeches as late as the time of Dion Chrysostom, and offered a special cult to the memory of Achilles. Beyond the line of Greek colonies dwelt a whole world of tribes, whom the Greeks designated by the common name of Scythians, with whom they entered into wars and alliances, and who served them as middlemen in their trade with the countries of the north. ”

“ Then, as Herodotus puts it, all Greeks were still free; it was in the course of the next century that some Greeks were brought under the power of barbarian masters. If some Greek colonies were still to be planted, all the fields of Greek colonization had already been opened. And in most of them the Greek cities were at the height of their power and greatness, positive and relative; they were greater than they were in after days, greater than the cities of old Greece were at the same time. ”

“ By reason of transportations en masse, of half free, half-compulsory colonization, of wars, and commerce in slaves, and gradually also because their spirit of enterprise took the direction more and more of commercial pursuits, they had become a diaspora, which, while numerous particularly in the sea-towns, using for the most part the Greek language, and influenced on many sides by Greek culture, still everywhere held firmly together, and preserved its existence as a distinct community. Like other inhabitants of the empire, they enjoyed the benefit of the protection of the Roman law. ”

“ Placed between two rivers, the Crathis and the Sybaris—possessing extraordinary advantages of site and climate, this celebrated colony rose with unparalleled rapidity to eminence in war and luxury in peace. So great were its population and resources, that it is said by Diodorus to have brought at one time three hundred thousand men into the field—an army which doubled that which all Greece could assemble at Plataea! The exaggeration is evident; but it still attests the belief of a populousness and power which must have rested upon no fabulous foundation. ”

“ Along these shores, from the earliest period of Hellenic colonization, Grecian enterprise had planted its busy centers of civilization. On each favorable site, where agriculture or commerce could thrive, cities grew up in the midst of prosperous colonies, in which wealth and power in their rapid advance brought in the lights of science, art, literature, and all the refinements and elegances which Grecian colonization made the invariable accompaniments of its march,――adorning its solid triumphs with the graceful polish of all that could exalt the enjoyment of prosperity. ”

“ This massive grouping belongs to the character of legend,—the Æolic and Ionic emigrations, as well as the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, are each invested with unity, and imprinted upon the imagination as the results of a single great impulse. But such is not the character of the historical colonies: when we come to relate the Italian and Sicilian emigrations, it will appear that each colony has its own separate nativity and causes of existence. ”

“ In no period of history have there ever been formed a greater number of new political communities, under such variety of circumstances, personal as well as local. And a few chronicles, however destitute of philosophy, reporting the exact march of some of these colonies from their commencement,—amidst all the difficulties attendant on amalgamation with strange natives, as well as on a fresh distribution of land,—would have added greatly to our knowledge both of Greek character and Greek social existence. ”

“ A great stimulus about this time was given to this practice by the expansion of Greek colonisation, the greatest world-event of the period, which reacted in many ways on religion. As the new colonists could not take with them the tombs or the bones of the aboriginal hero of their stock, they must institute a new hero-cult, so as to bind the new citizens together by the tie of heroic kinship. ”

“ Thus, throughout the centuries, by a process of colonization that was forwarded now by peaceful means and again by war, Hellenism forced its way steadily eastward, and on the basis of the older indigenous population a new sphere for Greek colonization was opened up which developed its own peculiar cultural strength only after the passing away of the ancient Greek civilization, in Christian, that is, and Byzantine times. ”

“ Importance of the Colonies.—Wherever they settled, the colonists constituted a new state which in no respect obeyed the mother town from which they had come out. And so the whole Mediterranean found itself surrounded by Greek cities independent one of the others. Of these cities many became richer and more powerful than their mother towns; they had a territory which was larger and more fertile, and in consequence a greater population. ”

“ The city of Cyrene, in northern Africa, dates from about 630 B.C. Greek colonists also went north and east, through the Dardanelles and on into the Black Sea. (See map, Figure 2.) Salonica and Constantinople date back to Greek colonization. Many of the colonies reflected great honor and credit on the motherland, and served to spread Greek manners, language, and religion over a wide area.
[4] It is the great mixed races that have counted for most in history. ”

“ The Black Sea rivers in ancient times opened their countries to such elements of Hellenic culture as might penetrate from the Greek trading colonies at their mouths, especially the Greek forms of Christianity. ”

“ To do this, she should explain that before there were immigrants, there were discoverers and colonists, from Spain, England, and France; and that these countries had their origin in colonies from Rome, herself a colony from Greece. The teacher should explain that the spirit in these ancient cities that inspired colonization, trade, and empire was the inherent and ineradicable desire of men, first, for the opportunity of ruling themselves, and then to establish bonds of union against foreign aggression. Children will then perceive that the ancient Greeks were men quite like ourselves ”

“ The progress of many of the ancient Greek colonies towards wealth and greatness seems accordingly to have been very rapid. In the course of a century or two, several of them appear to have rivalled, and even to have surpassed, their mother cities. ”

“ The second great stream of migration proceeded from Athens [after the death of Codrus—see ATHENS: FROM THE DORIAN MIGRATION TO B. C. 683—according to Greek tradition, the younger sons of Codrus leading these Ionian colonists across the Aegean, first to the Carian city of Miletus—see MILETUS,—which they captured, and then to the conquest of Ephesus and the island of Samos] . ... The colonies spread until a dodecapolis was established, similar to the union which the Ionians had founded in their old settlements on the northern shore of Peloponnesus. ”