Wandering Greeks (10 page)

Though violent encounters between indigenous peoples and Greeks are likely to have been commonplace, there were occasions, too, where the settlers and the local inhabitants lived amicably together. A case in point is Emporium, modern Ampurias, on the coast of northeast Spain, where the local people, known as the Indicetans, chose to share the same circuit wall with the Greeks in the interests of security and so cordoned off their residential area by a cross-wall. In time they created a unified state with combined Greek and non-Greek institutions (Str.
Geog
. 3.4.8 C160; cf. Demetriou 2012, 45–46). At Incoronata and Policoro (probable site of Siris), cities in the instep of Italy, burials dating to the seventh century suggest, too, that Greeks and natives coexisted peacefully. The Phocaeans, who began founding settlements in the western Mediterranean in the sixth century, seem to have made a point of cultivating close relations with the local inhabitants (Domínguez 2006, 448). We have already seen that the Iberian king Arganthonius invited Phocaeans to settle in his territory, and it may be that the Phocaeans circulated the story to demonstrate the high esteem in which local peoples held them. There is also evidence that, from the late-fifth century onward, indigenous Oscans living in Neapolis were granted citizenship and even allowed to hold magistracies (Lomas 2000, 177).

We should also bear in mind that 129 of the 279 settlements were indigenous from the start and became hellenized only as the result of a long period of acculturation (Hansen and Nielsen 2004, index 27 [pp. 1390–96]). In such cases we should probably be thinking not of a sizable contingent arriving in one burst, so to speak, but of a steady but constant trickle of individuals over time.

At times what had begun as a fruitful and symbiotic relationship eventually became hostile and exploitative. In some cases the settlers became reliant on local labor and enslaved the indigenous population. This is what happened at Syracuse, where the land that belonged to wealthy Greek aristocrats known as
gamoroi
came to be worked by an
underclass of locals who were “slaves called the
Kullurioi
,” possibly a pejorative term meaning “donkey men” (Hdt. 7.155.2; cf. Arist. fr. 586 Rose). At Heraclea Pontica on the shores of the Black Sea a tribe called the Mariandynoi, nicknamed “the gift-bearers,” placed themselves under the control of Greek settlers, for whom they worked as laborers in return for military protection (Pl.
Laws
6.776cd; Ath.
Deipn
. 6.263e). Last, the Byzantines are said to have treated the indigenous Bithynians as the Spartans did the helots (Phylarchus
FGrH
81 F 8). As Fisher (1993, 33) put it, these three instances may be “only a few tips of a large number of nasty icebergs.”

Conversely the Greeks themselves sometimes underwent subjugation. At Posidonia, for instance, according to the fourth-century historian and musical theorist Aristoxenus, the indigenous Lucanian population enslaved the Greeks and suppressed their culture. The immigrants were left with one festival “where they gather together and remember their old language and customs, and after weeping and wailing with one another, they depart” (
ap
. Ath.
Deipn
. 14.632ab; see Lomas 2000, 178). Most striking is the case of Greeks inhabiting the Black Sea region and the western coast of Turkey, who from the late sixth century onward fell under the control of the Scythians, Lydians, and Persians, though as Graham (1982a, 156) notes this was not accompanied by barbarization of the Greek communtites.

Women Settlers

Though a few women from the mother-city probably joined a settlement once it had been securely established, it is by no means certain that they would have settled in sufficient numbers to enable it to reproduce itself. There would often, therefore, have been a compelling need to recruit local women. “Recruiting” could take various forms, viz intermarriage, abduction, rape, or any other type of carnal heterosexual union. The Greeks preserved the belief that they occasionally resorted to violence to resolve the shortage of women. Herodotus tells us that
the Athenian settlers who participated in the foundation of Miletus abducted a number of Carian women (1.146.2–3). They later added to this outrage by massacring the women's fathers, husbands, and sons. This incidentally had the consequence of depriving the women of any legal status, since without a male relative to give them away, they could not marry their abductors. The women thus took a solemn oath “neither to eat with the men [viz their abductors] nor to mention them by name.” Though Herodotus enjoyed cordial relations with the Athenians, he originated from Halicarnassus in Caria, and it is perhaps for this reason that he dwells on the plight of the indigenous population. The story is indicative of the tense (to say the least) domestic relations that abduction would have generated, though not surprisingly perhaps there is no record of a similar instance in our sources.

The Greeks did not in principle disapprove of intermarriage, and it is likely to have occurred frequently when a settlement was in its infancy. Sicel names found on gravestones in Greek cemeteries at Syracuse have been plausibly interpreted as evidence of intermarriage. As the
apoikia's
population stabilized, intermarriage may well have decreased. However, there is evidence that it was still being practiced in the late fifth century, notably between the Elymians, a local Sicilian people, and the Greeks who inhabited western Sicily (cf. Thuc. 6.6.2). Very occasionally, too, we hear of dynastic marriages between Greeks and neighboring non-Greeks, no doubt intended to cement good relations between the two (see Hall 2002, 102–3, for examples).

Intermarriage has profound consequences both for the individuals concerned and for society as a whole. The offspring of such unions often experience cultural and social isolation, as well as political disenfranchisement. Was the experience of the children of ethnically mixed unions living in a Greek settlement broadly similar? Some at least are likely to have grown up bilingual and may well have felt a stronger attachment to the indigenous culture. Thucydides (4.109.3–4) tells us that the indigenous populations of many of the cities on Athos were bilingual, and this may well have been the case, too, on the island of Lemnos, which was inhabited by several non-Greek peoples before it was settled by the Greeks (
IG
XII.8, pp. 2–3; Boardman 1999, 85–86).

Setbacks, Failures, and Eventual Successes

Pioneers could never predict the outcome of their voyage. Violent tempests are a frequent occurrence in the Mediterranean, and once their ships had been driven off course, they would be exposed to all manner of dangers, as the tortuous wanderings of Odysseus and Aeneas make abundantly clear. As their ships could hold only limited supplies of food, they would frequently have to stop to replenish their stock, often taking enormous risks to do so. Starvation, both along the way and on arrival at their destination, was an ever-present danger. One cannot but sympathize with a Corinthian pioneer called Aithiops, who, en route to found a settlement at Syracuse, became so hungry that “he sold his mess-mate the
klêros
[allotment of land] which he had drawn by lot for the price of a honey cake” (Arichilochus fr. 293
IEG
= Ath.
Deipn
. 4.167d).
³

The dangers that attended even the best-prepared undertaking can hardly be exaggerated. The Greeks have for the most part recorded their successes, not their failures. An exception is Ennea Hodoi, which the Athenians made nine attempts to settle before they finally established a viable foundation nearby at Amphipolis (see
appendix B
). Some ventures no doubt ended calamitously and with total loss of life. Others faltered because the settlers simply lost their resolve. Some settlements dissolved because they succumbed to internal strife. Yet other expeditions will have succeeded only after many twists of fortune. Often pioneers settled in what they believed to be an ideal location, only to be ejected after a few months or even a year—the situation that Vergil explores with profound insight in the
Aeneid
, in which the hero makes many missteps and is forced to relocate several times before reaching his final destination, only to face concerted opposition once he does.

Sometimes the original Greek pioneers quarreled with the newcomers. This is what happened at Thurii, where those who originally
established Sybaris treated
hoi prosgraphentes
(those who signed up later) as second-class citizens (D.S. 12.11.1–2). Among other injustices, the Sybarites claimed the land that was nearest to the urban center and allocated to the newcomers land that was far away. In response,
hoi prosgraphentes
, who greatly outnumbered the Sybarites, rose up and massacred the latter. They then summoned pioneers from all over Greece and apportioned land on equal terms. Even in cases where the original inhabitants and the later settlers managed to coexist peaceably, some resentment may well have simmered beneath the surface, ready to flare up at a moment's notice.

Thucydides' account of the wanderings and travails of some enterprising settlers from Megara perfectly exemplifies the complex trajectory that many pioneers had to undergo (6.4.1–2). These Megarians first settled at Trotilus on the east coast of Sicily. Their foundation did not prosper, however, so they threw in their lot with some Chalcidian pioneers, who had settled at Leontini. In time, however, the Megarians fell out with the Chalcidians and were expelled from Leontini. They went on to found Thapsus, situated a short distance away along the coast. When their leader died, they again became refugees. At the invitation of a Sicel king called Hyblon, they founded Megara Hyblaea a few miles to the north of Thapsus, naming the city in his honor (see later, map 2). There they lived peaceably for 245 years until Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse, expelled their descendants. A face-saving device to explain the failure of a pioneering venture was to tell tall tales about encounters with monstrous races. Although Herodotus did not himself believe in the reports of a goat-footed people who lived in the mountains nor in men who sleep for six months at a stretch, as related by the bald-headed Argippaioi (4.25.1), even the ultra-rationalist Thucydides did not deny outright the existence of the Laestrygonians or Cyclopes. In fact he concludes his excursus on the peoples of Sicily with the comment, “We have to satisfy ourselves with what the poets said and with what anyone else knows” (66.2.1). Given their level of ignorance of the world around them, many Greeks probably set out from home with the fear of encountering monstrous races never wholly absent from their minds (Garland 2010, 162–66).

The Athenian Postscriptum

The great age of sending out settlers came to a close in the early sixth century. The movement did not, however, cease altogether. At least seventy-two settlements were founded in the fifth and fourth centuries. The most active city-state in the fifth century was Athens, which from 478–404 sent out some thirty bands of settlers, many to existing sites whose populations they had banished for this purpose (see
appendix B
). We read of two types of Athenian settlements,
apoikiai
and
klêrouchiai
, though ancient authors do not invariably differentiate between the two. The number of settlers varied considerably—from as few as 250 at Andros to as many as 4,000 at Chalcis. Whereas membership of a cleruchy was restricted to Athenian citizens, noncitizens were also permitted to settle in
apoikiai
. In some
apoikiai
in fact the noncitizens greatly outnumbered the citizens. It goes without saying that the non-Athenian settlers would have been required to be supportive of Athens's foreign policy and political system, since the institutions of the settlement would be modeled closely on those of Athens.

Though some settlements had a clear military and strategic importance, notable examples being Amphipolis on the northern coast of Thrace and Thurii in Lucania, this was not true of all, so other motives for founding them must have been in play. One we can detect was to increase the number of hoplites in Athens's army. The majority of cleruchs and colonists probably belonged to the lowest property-owning class—namely, the
thêtes
—though those in the next-to-lowest class, known as the
zeugitae
, also participated. Cleruchs received a
klêros
(allotment), from which their name
klêrouchos
(allotment holder), derives. As such they became automatically liable to military service as hoplites.

The Alexandrian Post-Postscriptum

At the end of the period covered by this survey Alexander the Great founded settlements in places as far away as eastern Iran, where urban
entities had previously been rare. Plutarch (
Mor
. 328e) puts their total number at “over 70,” but this is greatly exaggerated, and the number of actual
poleis
may have been as few as six. They were founded for a variety of purposes. Though the majority was military, some were primarily commercial. This was certainly true of the greatest of them all, Alexandria on the Nile Delta, which was founded in the spring of 331.

With the possible exception of Alexandria on the Nile Delta, the populations of most of the foundations comprised Greeks and Macedonians on the one hand and indigenous peoples from the surrounding neighborhood, especially nomads, on the other. Griffith (1935, 23) calculated that in total Alexander settled 36,000 Greeks and Macedonians abroad. Most were mercenaries, who would have had little say in the matter. Not surprisingly, some, “longing for Greek customs and the Greek way of life,” and “submitting only out of fear of Alexander,” resented having to settle so far away from their homelands (D.S. 18.7.1). So when Alexander died, they abandoned their settlement and headed back to Greece. We do not know how many remained, and we learn little about how they fared.

¹
I have taken to heart Robin Osborne's observation (1998, 269): “A proper understanding of archaic Greek history can only come when chapters on ‘Colonization' are eradicated from books on early Greece.” see too, Purcell (1990, 56), who complains of “the ethnic presumptuousness and false sense of purpose in the term” That had no bearing on the phenomenon. It was Finley (1976, 174), who first drew attention to the inappropriateness of the term “colony” as a description of early Greek settlements. I am grateful to one of the readers for Princeton University Press for directing me to the origins of the debate.