29. COLONIAL EXPANSION OF GREECE (ABOUT 750-500 B.C.)
THE GREAT AGE OF COLONIZATION
While Athens, Sparta, and their sister states were working out the problems of government, another significant movement was going on in the Greek world. The Greeks, about the middle of the eighth century B.C., began to plant numerous colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean and of the Black Sea. The great age of colonization covered more than two hundred years. [26]
REASONS FOR FOUNDING COLONIES
Several reasons led to the founding of colonies. Trade was an important motive. The Greeks, like the Phoenicians, [27] could realize large profits by exchanging their manufactured goods for the food and raw materials of other countries. Land hunger was another motive. The poor soil of Greece could not support many inhabitants and, when population increased, emigration afforded the only means of relieving the pressure of numbers. A third motive was political and social unrest. Greek cities at this period contained many men of adventurous disposition who were ready to seek in foreign countries a refuge from the oppression of nobles or tyrants. They hoped to find in their new settlements more freedom than they had at home.
CHARACTER OF THE GREEK COLONY
A Greek colony was not simply a trading post; it was a center of Greek life. The colonists continued to be Greeks in customs, language, and religion. Though quite independent of the parent state, they always regarded it with reverence and affection: they called themselves "men away from home." Mother city and daughter colony traded with each other and in time of danger helped each other. A symbol of this unity was the sacred fire carried from the public hearth of the old community to the new settlement.
COLONIZATION IN THE NORTH AND EAST
The Greeks planted many colonies on the coast of the northern Aegean and on both sides of the long passage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Their most important colony was Byzantium, upon the site where Constantinople now stands. They also made settlements along the shores of the Black Sea. The cities founded here were centers from which the Greeks drew their supplies of fish, wood, wool, grain, metals, and slaves. The immense profits to be gained by trade made the Greeks willing to live in a cold country so unlike their own and among barbarous peoples.
COLONIZATION IN THE WEST
The western lands furnished far more attractive sites for colonization. The Greeks could feel at home in southern Italy, where the genial climate, pure air, and sparkling sea recalled their native land. At a very early date they founded Cumae, on the coast just north of the bay of Naples. Emigrants from Cumae, in turn, founded the city of Neapolis (Naples), which in Roman times formed a home of Greek culture and even to-day possesses a large Greek population. To secure the approaches from Greece to these remote colonies, two strongholds were established on the strait of Messina: Regium (modern Reggio) on the Italian shore and Messana (modern Messina) on that of Sicily. Another important colony in southern Italy was Tarentum (modern Taranto).
[Illustration: "TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE," PAESTUM Paestum, the Greek Poseidonia, was a colony of Sybaris The malarial atmosphere of the place led to its desertion in the ninth century of our era. Hence the buildings there were not used as quarries for later structures. The so called "Temple of Neptune" at Paestum is one of the best preserved monuments of antiquity.]
THE SICILIAN COLONIES
Greek settlements in Sicily were mainly along the coast. Expansion over the entire island was checked by the Carthaginians, who had numerous possessions at its western extremity. The most celebrated colony in Sicily was Syracuse, established by emigrants from Corinth. It became the largest of Greek cities.
OTHER MEDITERRANEAN COLONIES
In Corsica, Sardinia, and on the coast of Spain Carthage also proved too obstinate a rival for the Greeks to gain much of a foothold. The city of Massilia (Marseilles), at the mouth of the Rhone, was their chief settlement in ancient Gaul. Two colonies on the southern shore of the Mediterranean were Cyrene, west of Egypt, and Naucratis, in the Delta of the Nile. From this time many Greek travelers visited Egypt to see the wonders of that strange old country.
RESULTS OF COLONIZATION
Energetic Greeks, the greatest colonizers of antiquity, thus founded settlements from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. "All the Greek colonies" says an ancient writer, "are washed by the waves of the sea, and, so to speak, a fringe of Greek earth is woven on to foreign lands." [28] To distinguish themselves from the foreigners, or "barbarians," [29] about them, the Greeks began to call themselves by the common name of Hellenes. Hellas, their country, came to include all the territory possessed by Hellenic peoples. The life of the Greeks, henceforth, was confined no longer within the narrow limits of the Aegean. Wherever rose a Greek city, there was a scene of Greek history.