HELLAS:NET - History

In the course of the Archaic era a second and much greater wave of immigration took place than the one during the Dorian invasion. Such a sudden explosion of colonisation did not happen again in the course of history, until Europe started its colonisation in the sixteenth century BC. The great expansion of the number of Poleis outside the mainland of Hellas is known as the Archaic colonisation.

Such a new Polis is called apoikia, which is misleading translated as colony. Misleading because the daughter cities were no real colonies. Each colony was a free and autonomous community of people, which was in no way subordinate to the mother city. The colonies normally kept no more than sentimental and religious ties with the foundress city. An extreme example of this is Cyrene which was founded by the drought-striken Thera. There the adventurers were even told that they were not welcome in Thera anymore. A better translation for apoikia would be the literal one: elsewhere-home.

Reasons for the colonisation.

One of the main reasons for founding a new city was that the Poleis in Hellas could not support any longer the rapidly increasing population. There was not enough land to grow enough crop for everybody, and often the land was not fertile enough. Importing goods was difficult because of the geography of Hellas, and because of the limited transportation. Another result of this relative overpopulation was that small farmers became very poor. This was because either only the oldest son inherited the land, which forced the other sons to find another way of living, or because all sons got a piece of land which was really small and hardly enough to support them. Often they were forced to loan things which was a threat to their independency.

That is why the system of colonisation was an excellent system. This way the pressure on a city was lowered before it was too much. The benefit of a more or less forced immigration is that the people of the lower classes left the mothercity in the hope of a better situation in the new city. Had the situation already become too much for the city then normally the richest, and thus most important people would have left the city as first. Now this was prevented so that the mothercity maintained its power, while it even increased it some by founding an independent daughtercity. The immigrating people were also happy as they often got a more important position in the new city. Most immigrants had changed their rights of citizenship of their original city for citizenship of the new Polis. This does not mean that all inhabitants were citizens of the foundress city, often people from different areas assembled in a city which was a good start for an expedition in search for a new future.

There was often also a lot of competition among the nobility in the early Poleis. Each house had to prove itself to ensure its future. Sparta tried to avoid the problems by conquering land of neighbours, but this was not always possible. Other cities, like Athens, were forced to import goods and to sent out expeditions led by a noble who felt mistreated, or who hoped to get more power as the founder of the new daughter city. Of course politics were also one of the reasons for the normal people to leave their home. Not every group of the population had the same rights, and often they hoped to get the citizenship of the colony, so that they would be treated as an equal.

In other occasions colonies were founded in the search of ore, or in a desire to increase the trade. Example of this is the colony Naucratis in Egypt. The pharaoh refused to let any Greek colonies on his territory, besides this colony which was the center of the trade between Egypt and Hellas. The number of these trade-colonies is very small however, and often they did not became a full Polis. The power was not in the hands of the Greek trader, respectable Greeks rather grew things. Still, the element can not be ignored.

The Lelatine war.

An event that speeded up the colonisation was the Lelatine war between Chalcis and Eretria. The rest of the Greek world became passively involved, and alliances and contacts over longer distances than expected from such small city-states started. These early adventurers arrived home at a land which was in confusion, and their stories of new opportunities most likely easily persuaded the timid and desperate to immigrate in the hope of getting a better future.

During the Greek colonisation Greek culture was spread out over the whole of the Mediterranean, increasing the power of the Greek cities considerably.

The colonisation reached the Thracian coast of the Aegean sea, the coasts of the Hellespont, Proponits, Bosporus and the Black sea in the east. And in the west colonies were founded on Sicily, southern Italy, southern France, and in the northwest part of Spain. There were even so many settlements in southern Italy that this area was later known as Magna Graecia. Southern Spain, Sardinia, Corsica and north Africa remained inaccessible for the Greeks however as they were Carthaginian.

After about 200 years the colonisation died a natural death as the Poleis could support many more people because of the increased contacts and import between the Poleis throughout the Mediterranean. Remarkable is that the colonists continued to speak their own dialect, and brought their own Gods with them. This explains why the colonies often still had an emotional and religious bond with their foundress city, in spite of their independency. Still, because of the lack of intensive contacts between mother city and daughter cities did this colonisation not contribute to the formation of a Greek empire throughout the Mediterranean. It only helped to spread out the Greek culture as this was often taught to the original inhabitants by the colonists.