BMCR 2009.03.14, Gocha R. Tsetskhladze, Greek Colonisation

Gocha R. Tsetskhladze (ed.), Greek Colonisation: An Account of Greek
Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, Volume Two. Mnemosyne,
Supplementa 193.  Leiden/Boston:  Brill, 2008.  Pp. xviii, 566; 56
figs.  ISBN 9789004155763.  $232.00.

Reviewed by Elias K. Petropoulos, Democritus University of Thrace
([email protected])
Word count:  3202 words
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[The individual essays are listed at the end of the review.]

In the present work edited by G. Tsetskhladze the relevant specialists
have assumed the task of presenting the colonial activity of the
ancient Greeks in Northern Aegean, the Adriatic, Libya and Cyprus. In
addition, three thematic chapters examine the situation in Central
Greece on the eve of the colonisation movement, stories about the
foundation of settlements, and Greek expansion during the Classical
period.

The first chapter, by Michalis Tiverios, is dedicated to Greek colonial
activity in the northern Aegean. The text includes a full list of
ancient Greek colonies in northern Greece, from the Chalcidice to the
Dardanelles with a chronological range from the Trojan War to the
concluding phase of Greek colonisation. We may distinguish two basic
periods within this time-span, which divide in the 8th century BC when
the so-called Second Greek Colonisation Movement began. Ionians from
Euboea, Eretrians and Chalcideans seem to have played a leading part
during the first period as well as at the beginning of the second
(until the outbreak of the so-called Lelantine War, which put an end to
the Euboeans' power).

According to Tiverios, the discovery of early Euboean pottery in
northern Greece functions as proof of the Euboean presence in the area.
In addition he believes that there is no real reason why we should not
regard as Euboean all the ceramic products made by the Euboean
colonists and their descendants in northern Greece, even if they are
characterised by clays of different composition. All the available
archaeological evidence leads to the conclusion that southern Greeks,
especially Ionians from Euboea, settled in the Chalcidice after the
Trojan War (15). These Greeks must have come to know northern Greece as
early as the Mycenaean period, when people were moving about in those
parts in tribes or clans.

Another wave of Euboean colonists followed in the 8th century BC, i.e.
during the second Greek colonisation, when a large number of Euboean
colonies and emporia were founded. They occupied almost all the
available living space here, avoiding significant gaps, which risked
being filled by other Greek cities. It seems that the most significant
exception was the foundation of Poteidaea by the Corinthians, at a time
when the Euboeans were no longer a great power. This is why the city of
Chalcis chose (for a short time it is true) to co-operate with the
Andrians, that is people who were demonstrably hostile towards their
rivals (the Eretrians), in order to found new colonies in Chalcidean
areas which were being threatened and needed support. The Andrian
colonies (such as Acanthus, Stagirus, Sane and Argilus) in
north-eastern Chalcidice and at the head of the Strymonic Gulf were
founded around the middle of the 7th century BC.

In the second colonisation movement of northern Greece the arrival of
Parians on the island of Thasos starts a period that has left an
indelible mark on the subsequent history of the region. A great
advantage --inter alia-- of the site was its proximity to the Thracian
coast, about which the first colonists probably already had
information. Thus, the Parians opted to settle at the most northerly
end of the island in order to begin their plans to expand onto the
coast opposite.  Tiverios claims that the initial contact of the island
with the fertile lands on the opposite shore of Thrace might had been
made before the colony was officially established in around 680-670 BC
(73-74). It seems that neighbours of the Parians in the new land were
the Thracians and probably the Phoenicians, though, as the
archaeological evidence shows, it is impossible to trace the latter.
Despite the resistance of the Thracians and also of other Greeks,
literary and archaeological finds confirm that the colonists managed to
settle on the Thracian coast (the so-called Thasian Peraia)
comparatively quickly, by the second half of the 7th century BC, where
they established, among other colonies and emporia, important apoikiai
such as Neapolis, Oesyme, Galepsus, and Stryme.

In trying to consolidate themselves mainly in the areas close to their
island, the Thasian-Parians left room east of the Nestos River for
other Greeks to found colonies. Several important colonies were then
founded such as Abdera, Maroneia, Dicaea, and Orthagoria, all of them
of Ionian origin.

The colonisation of the island of Samothrace is problematic because of
the lack of evidence in the ancient written sources. Archaeological
data from the site show that Ionian elements co-existed with Aeolian
elements and the latter appear to have been stronger. So, it seems
likely to the author to conclude that the first settlers who arrived on
the island, must have come from Aeolis, from the nearby Troad or from
Lesbos. They would have been accompanied by Ionians from Samos (110).
Samothrace occupied a very important location on the maritime routes
which linked Asia with Europe and Aegean islands with Thrace. The first
colonists of the island were very soon obliged to look for fertile land
on the mainland opposite, because Samothrace had only one small plain
in the west and a narrow strip of fertile land along its north coast.
As the Parians of the Thasos colonised the opposite Thasian Peraia, in
the same way the Greek colonists of Samothrace started to conquer the
rich Thracian Peraia, thus becoming the Samothracian Peraia, which
consisted of a coastal area from Mt. Ismaros to the River Hebrus and
was bounded to the north by the foothills of Mt. Zone. In this area the
Greeks established several colonies: Drys, Mesembria, Zone, Sale,
Tempyra and Charakoma.

As far as the Aeolian and Ionian colonisation in the north-eastern part
of Aegean Thrace is concerned (i.e. the coastal cities east of the
Hebrus River as far as Elaious at the southernmost tip of the
Chersonese), our information is based mainly on the ancient written
tradition because of the very limited excavations in the area (118). We
also know that the Athenians too took a particular interest in the
north-east Aegean, though a somewhat tardy one, i.e. after the end of
the 7th century BC.

The next chapter, written by Pierre Cabanes, introduces us to Greek
colonial movement in the Adriatic Sea. The first part of the chapter is
dedicated to the ancient written (almost exclusively Greek and,
subsequently, Latin) tradition and the myths about the contacts between
the Greek world and the two shores of the Adriatic. The different
stages of Greek colonisation are then examined, starting with Euboean
colonial activity in the area during the second third of the 8th
century BC. In spite of the information we have from ancient sources
(mainly Plutarch) on early Euboean (Eretrian) colonial activity in
Corcyra, many modern scholars reject this Eretrian colonisation because
of the lack of any relevant archaeological evidence thus far. The next
colonial stage begins with the Corinthian settlement in Corcyra,
founded by Chersicrates, in 733 BC. The new colonists clashed with the
Eretrians and the locals (Liburni), who were either driven out or
subjected. Though the mother-city (Corinth) and the colony (Corcyra)
soon became --after two generations--hostile, it seems that those
hostilities were not without respite, as shown by their collaboration
in founding the colonies of Epidamnus-Dyrrhachium and Illyrian
Apollonia in order to control all the routes linking the Adriatic coast
to the interior (169). But the Greeks did not stop at Epidamnus. They
continued their colonial activities to the north: Phocaeans, Rhodians,
Thessalians, Aeginetans, Athenians, and even the Syracusans founded
many apoikiai and emporia on the Adriatic shores.

Greek colonisation continued on the Dalmatian and Albanian coast, where
many colonies were established: Nymphaeum, Issa, Pharos[[1]] and Black
Corcyra. In the late 4th century BC the Athenians too were obliged to
create a naval base in a region of good grain cultivation in order to
find new sources of wheat to feed the population of Athens.

The colonies in the Adriatic continued their history during the
Hellenistic period with many vicissitudes, especially the colonies of
Epidamnus-Dyrrhachium and Apollonia. The Roman invasion in 229-228 BC
in the first Illyrian War affected the situation in the whole area. It
was the time when the maritime piracy increased in the Adriatic Sea and
the royal dynasties changed in Epirus and Illyria. In the very next
century, i.e. after the massive Roman intervention along Adriatic
shores, there are indications which attest the progression of the Greek
presence, at the moment that Rome became the sole power in the region.

The ancient Greek presence in the territory of Cyrenaica is the topic
of the next paper by Michel Austin. The largest and most prosperous
Greek city in Libya, according to ancient written sources and the
archaeological evidence so far, is Cyrene, about which there are
unusually abundant Greek literary sources, mainly Herodotus's
narrative. Indeed, no other Greek foundation is related in such detail
in extant sources, and no other individual founder receives as much
attention in literary sources as does the founder of Cyrene, Battos.
However, the author believes that the abundant written sources seem to
have some disadvantages. For example, they are not contemporary to the
foundation (starting only in the 5th century BC) and they are one-sided
in giving primarily a Greek perspective, focusing solely on Cyrene. The
other Greek cities of Libya (Tauchira, Barca, Euesperides) are almost
completely excluded. That is why archaeological investigations are very
significant, providing some general control over at least the most
basic elements in Herodotus's narratives.

The first Greek settlement in Libya was relatively late in the
expansion of the Greek world. The author suggests the last third of the
7th century BC as the date of the foundation of Cyrene. A more precise
chronology seems to him rather illusory (192). The role of the island
of Thera (Santorini) in the original foundation of Cyrene is repeatedly
attested by many writers over a long period of time and it may be taken
as historically true. The author, however, believes that Thera was only
a starting point, and a number of parts of the Greek world either
participated in the initial foundation or in its subsequent expansion
(193). Archaeological investigations have proven Aegean connexions
(mainly Cretan) from the very start of the establishment in Libya
(204). These connexions are reflected in the finds of Aegean pottery
at the major Greek Libyan sites, including an unusual amount of Cretan
material as well as the more common East Greek and Rhodian wares (194).
Thus, the author offers the opinion that the settlement had been
increasingly viewed in the Greek world as an attractive prospect.

The migration from Greece to Cyprus and the process of Hellenisation of
the island is the subject of the following chapter by Maria Iacovou. From 
the very beginning the author points out that the purpose of her
chapter is to explore as many different avenues  that can provide
insights into how the protohistoric Greek population movement came
about and what changes it brought to the human environment of Cyprus,
how it manifested itself in the linguistic and material record and how
it affected the issues of ethnicity and state formation (223). Her
essay is divided into two parts: the first deals with the island of
Cyprus before the arrival of the Greeks (i.e. it shows what the island
was like), while the second  begins with the situation in the Early
Iron Age and the process of Hellenisation of the island's population.
During the first period it seems that Cyprus remained well beyond the
periphery of Mycenaean political authority with no Mycenaean palace
characteristics. This is contrary to what we can detect in the island
of Crete. The conclusion is, thus, that prior to the 12th century BC
the idea of a colonial penetration of Cyprus by Mycenaean Greeks cannot
be supported and the politico-economic system of the Mycenaean palaces
is not responsible for the Greek colonisation of Cyprus (230).

The second part of the chapter is more extensive and covers a wide
chronological period from the Early Iron Age to Late Antiquity, though
there are some modern Greek parallels to the colonisation episode of
the 19th and 20th centuries AD. Iacovou points out three ways in which
the illiterate newcomers from the Aegean, after they had settled in the
Late Cypriote urban centres, managed to commence the process of
Hellenisation: they adopted and adapted the local Cypro-Minoan script
in order to write their own language, giving, thus, substance to their
ethnicity; they changed the taste of figurative representations of the
island into an Aegean-type painted pottery of eleventh-century Cyprus,
with the aid of which the Greek immigrants began to nurture an
historical memory of their ancestry; they provoked transformations in
mortuary practices. The material landscape of the Cypro-Geometric
(11th-8th centuries BC) settlements is characterised by absence of
ethnic boundaries. That means that the people of those settlements did
not feel necessary to safeguard their identity from a separate invasive
material culture (the Aegean for instance).

The establishment of a Greek-speaking population in Cyprus had another
effect on Early Iron Age cultural integration: the optimisation of
Cyprus's metal industry, redefining the island as a major international
metals' trader in the Mediterranean during this period (250). This
integration (or cultural homogeneity of the Cypriot society) was,
nevertheless, divided into three different linguistic groups: Greek,
Phoenician and an old unknown Eteocypriot. After having analysed the
process by which Arcado-Cypriot Greek and its carriers were established
in the island shortly before the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the
author's efforts are focused in tracing the appearance and the
subsequent history of the Phoenicians and their language in Cyprus.
Finally, she tries to highlight the history of Cypriot monarchies and
kingdoms in the 1st millennium BC.

Jean-Paul Descoeudres offers a significant contribution regarding the
situation in Central Greece just before the beginning of the ancient
Greek Colonisation of the 8th and 7th centuries BC, trying to
demonstrate the process itself, its characteristics and its causes.
After a very detailed analysis of the available ancient written
sources, as well as the archaeological evidence from the area under
examination (290-360), the author presents  the reasons why the ancient
Greek immigrants left their motherland and opened their geographical
horizons to the entire Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The author
believes that ancient Greece during this time was completely
self-sufficient in rural and raw materials (except for tin). The
country produced surpluses of agricultural products that could even be
exported in exchange for various luxury commodities, thus ruling out
the opinion that the prosperity of the motherland was due to the
provisions of their colonies in Sicily and southern Italy.

According to the evidence, it seems very unlikely that climatic
disasters could have been a catalyst to the colonisation movement, if
we consider that Euboea and Athens serve as good examples in this view
(361-362). Following the same logic, the author concludes that there is
no evidence that overpopulation in the modern sense of the term could
have been the main reason of the colonisation movement in the 8th
century BC.[[2]] Finally, the  analysis of the evidence leads to the
statement that there was a connexion between the start of the
colonisation movement and the beginning of the process of the Greek
polis formation. This connexion is not at all coincidental.

In the next chapter Jonathan M. Hall provides a theoretical analysis of
how scholars approach the colonial foundation stories. In the first
section of the chapter, Hall distinguishes three approaches to
foundation stories, which, however, are not situated equidistantly from
one another: first, the historical-positivist approach (deriving from
the Rankean scientific model); second, the poeticist approach; and,
third, the historical-constructivist approach. The author believes that
the latter two approaches define themselves against the
historical-positivist interpretations. In the next section the author's
intention is to subject generalising observations on the nature of
colonial foundations stories of 27 Italian colonies to more systematic
scrutiny. The credibility of the foundation stories and the role of
archaeological evidence in confirming the literary foundation dates are
discussed in the third section. As a case-study the author presents the
evidence regarding the foundation of Taras in the last section of his
chapter.

Although the ancient Greek colonisation movement is said end in the 6th
century BC, Thomas Figueira in the final chapter pursues it into the
5th and the 4th centuries in order to present the Greek powers (mainly
Athens) which continued to play an important colonial role in the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea. His first section is dedicated to
archaic Athenian colonisation (i.e. before 480 BC), which the author
characterises as patronal in order to stress the predominance of
individual (familial) initiatives. Patronal colonisation was not the
only means of occupying new lands. Athens absorbed territories along
its margins through incorporation into its core polity (432, 434).
According to the evidence, Attic settlements abroad in this period are
grouped into two categories: apoikiai and klerouchiai. The author
stresses two major impacts of colonisation on Athenian administration.
First, it helped offset damage done to Attica by Peloponnesian
incursions by providing subsistence to hoplites from external assets,
especially those who suffered financial setbacks. Second, Athenian
colonisation raised substantial revenues.

In the next section Figueira deals with Athenian overseas settlement in
the fourth century, a period in which Athens hoped to regain holdings
through recolonisation. Especially during the decades of the 360s and
350s Athens tried intensively to recover the colonial holdings lost at
the end of the Peloponnesian War.  The foundation of the second
Confederacy, as well as the elimination of Spartan Aegean naval power
at Naxos in 376 BC, served as favourable preconditions for Athens. In
the last section the author presents the colonial activities conducted
by authorities other than Athens during the classical period (480-323
BC) in homeland Greece, in Asia Minor, in Northern Aegean and Thrace,
in the Black Sea, and finally in Sicily and Italy. After a detailed
analysis the author concludes that colonisation was an important
political tool during the Classical period, especially because it
provided more resources, manpower and taxes to the metropolis. A
comparison between Archaic and Classical colonisation shows that the
latter did not have the total impact of the first one because the
Classical colonisers were usually recolonisers. Archaic colonising
aristocracies, on the contrary, could find many virgin sites to found
their settlements and various populations to interact with.

Overall the book fulfils its purpose of providing an overview of Greek
colonies and other Greek settlements overseas in one volume. All major
scientific aspects of the colonial phenomenon are reviewed in the light
of new evidence. Thus it, along with its companion volume (vol. 1 2006)
can be used by students as a useful and up-to-date survey of Greek
colonisation in antiquity.

Contents:

Gocha R. Tsetskhladze, Preface (ix - x)

List of Abbreviations (xi - xiv)

List of Illustrations (xv - xviii)

Michalis Tiverios, Greek Colonisation of the Northern Aegean (1-154)

Pierre Cabanes, Greek Colonisation in the Adriatic (155-185)

Michel Austin, The Greeks in Libya (187-217)

Maria Iacovou, Cyprus: From Migration to Hellenisation (219-288)

Jean-Paul Descoeudres, Central Greece on the Eve of the Colonisation
Movement (289-382)

Jonathan M. Hall, Foundation Stories (383-426)

Thomas Figueira, Colonisation in the Classical Period (427-523)

Index for Volume 2 (525-545)

Reprint of Index for Volume 1 (547-566)


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Notes:


1.   I feel obliged to add to the bibliography a recently published
study on ancient Pharos by Branko Kirigin, Pharos: The Parian
Settlement in Dalmatia: A study of a Greek colony in the Adriatic.
British Archaeological Reports International Series 1561. Oxford 2006.
The absence of this important reference in the author's bibliography is
probably due to the fact that the draft of this paper was submitted to
the editor in early 2000 and the editor published it in 2008, being
updated probably only selectively. The same could be said for almost
all the chapters of the book under review and the authors themselves
felt obliged to make a clear reference to this fact in the first pages
of their chapters: see for example the chapters of Tiverios and
Iacovou. In his Preface the editor makes special mention of the
patience of the authors and their willingness to update and even to
rewrite their initial manuscripts.

2.   For similar conclusions on the insignificance of metal trade as a
main motivation of ancient Greek colonisation, as well as the fact that
there was no serious problem of overpopulation, nor land shortage per
se in ancient Greece during the 8th century BC, see: Elias K.
Petropoulos, Hellenic Colonization in Euxeinos Pontos: Penetration,
Early Establishment and the Problem of the 'Emporion' Revisited.
British Archaeological Reports International Series 1394. Oxford 2005:
7, 41; Cherry J. F. and Davis J. L., "Northern Keos in Context," in L.
G. Mendoni and A. Mazarakis-Ainian (eds.), Kea-Kythnos: History and
Archaeology. Proceedings of an International Symposium. Kea-Kythnos,
22-25 June 1994. MELETIMATA, vol. 27. Athens 1998: 220-1. See also the
chapter of Thomas Figueira, p. 428.