The oikist was assisted in his undertakings by a mantis (professional seer), who was credited with having divined the precise location of the settlement and who conducted rites consecrating it to the gods. Over the course of time the mantis also had to help draw up nomima (regulations, customs, traditions) that would form the basis for the settlement’s social, political, and legal institutions. This included the division of the citizen body into tribes, the appointment of magistrates, the introduction of a lawcode, the establishment of a pantheon, the arrangement of the festival calendar, and much more besides. Overall nomima constituted “a powerful assimilative force when settlers of varied origins would join a nucleus of founders and coopt their identity by being absorbed in the social order” (Malkin 2012, 189–97).
It would no doubt have taken many years, perhaps as much as a generation, before a settlement was fully up and running. It is unclear how long the oikist would have retained the status and powers of an autokratôr or by what process those powers would have been handed over to a properly constituted government. Once the apoikia had been established on a secure footing, however, its inhabitants would typically dispatch a pentecontor back to the mother-city to report on its progress and invite additional settlers to join them (Schaefer 1960, 87).
Experiencing Nostalgia
The burden of leaving one’s homeland was both physical and psychological, involving as it did separation from parents, siblings, grandparents, and friends, and in some cases from wives and children as well. The image of Odysseus “longing for his wife and his homecoming” at the beginning of the Odyssey no doubt captures perfectly the emotional state of many Greek settlers, since very few of them could expect to set eyes on their relatives again (1.13). In Aeneid book 3 Priam’s son Helenus has reproduced Troy in miniature, with all the features of the former city (ll. 349–51). Being reminded constantly of his former life, he is wedded to the past, incapable of embracing the present—unlike Aeneas, who looks forward, no matter how dimly, to what lies ahead. Though some mother-cities—most notably, Corinth, Miletus, Syracuse, and Sinope—retained close political links with their offshoots, sometimes keeping them in a state of dependence, there is no evidence that any of them sought to facilitate emotional ties. How could they, given the constraints of communication in the ancient world? Besides which, it would have been highly counterproductive. The new settlement had to assert its own independent identity and validity from the start or else it would calamitously fail.
Leaving the Greek-inhabited world would have been like leaving planet earth. Even though in many cases there would have been presettlement trading contacts between the local people and the mother-city, there was no knowing what alien forms of life existed out there nor whether the group would survive its many ordeals. To comprehend the mindset required, we have only to reflect upon Homer’s portrait of Odysseus, regardless of the fact that Odysseus is seeking to return to his homeland rather than establish a new homeland elsewhere. He exhibits exactly the kind of craft, guile, and instinct for survival that would put him head and shoulders above his fellow-competitors in any reality TV show. They are, moreover, precisely the qualities that have distinguished anyone who sets out for an unknown destination in any period of history. His encounters with bizarre peoples evoke both the worst-case and best-case scenarios of what lay beyond the edge of the Greek-inhabited world. It is no surprise that the Odyssey was composed at a time when the expanding and hard-pressed population was seeking a new homeland in Sicily and southern Italy—the region where Odysseus’s fanciful adventures are likely to be situated.
Relations between Settlers and indigenous Populations
Our focus up to now has been on those bands of plucky Greeks who demonstrated such courage and enterprise in sailing out into the unknown. But that is only half the story of any diaspora. We should not ignore those who were on the receiving end of their courage and enterprise. The subject is one that is fraught with complication. As Tsetskhladze (1998, 44) has said of the Black Sea region, “Not many things are clear in the study of Greco-native relations,” and the same can be said of Greek-native relations in general. What is axiomatic, however, is that in many cases the settlers would have had to displace the local population, and that to achieve this they resorted to violence.
There are no accounts seen through the eyes of non-Greeks and only brief references to non-Greeks in Greek sources. Thucydides tells us that the Sicels, the native inhabitants of Sicily, were repeatedly driven out of their territory, first by the Corinthians who settled in Syracuse, then by the Chalcidians who settled in Leontini, and later by other Chalcidians who settled in Catania (6.3.2–3; cf. D.S. 11.76.3). Archaeology confirms Thucydides’ testimony at least in the case of Syracuse, where the neighboring Sicel site at Pantalica was abandoned shortly after the original Corinthian foundation was established (Vallet 1968, 110f.). It remains unclear, however, whether relations between Sicels and Greeks were antagonistic from the start or whether they became so only when the Greeks began to multiply and represented a threat to Sicel survival. There was a tradition that Androclus, a legendary king of Athens and one of the leaders of the Ionian migration, expelled the non-Greek inhabitants of Ephesus before establishing it as a Greek settlement (Str. Geog. 14.1.21 C640). There is also evidence that the indigenous population that occupied the territory around Sybaris and Taras in southern Italy fled as a result of Greek migration.
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 the
mselves 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 fe
w 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.
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