The Greek Colonies

c. 740–580 BCE — Aegean, Archaic Greece

Today: From Spain to the Black Sea (Syracuse, Marseille, Naples)

Land-hungry and quarrelsome, Greek cities sent out shiploads of citizens to found new cities from the Black Sea to Spain — Syracuse, Naples, Marseille, and hundreds more. Each colony was politically independent from the day it was founded, tied to its mother city by sentiment and trade rather than rule. The effect was to scatter the Greek language, alphabet, coinage, and habit of political argument around an entire sea. Rome learned its alphabet from Greek colonists in Italy, and Marseille is still there.

Worth knowing: Cicero later said the Greeks had sewn their cities onto the shores of the barbarian lands 'like a border on a garment.' Marseille, Naples, and Istanbul all began as Greek colonies and have been continuously inhabited ever since.

Pattern: Migration pressure — Large movements of peoples — pushed or pulled — reshape the societies they leave and the ones they enter.

Entry 34 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.