Greek colonies

Between the 8th and 6th centuries BC thousands of Greeks left their cities to found new ones on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. This was Greek colonisation, one of the great movements of ancient history. Plato wrote that the Greeks lived around the sea "like frogs around a pond".

Why they left

• Land shortage: Greece was mountainous, plains were few and population was rising.
• Trade: metals, grain, timber, slaves; many colonies began as trading posts.
• Political conflict: exiles, losers in civil strife, younger sons without inheritance.
• A spirit of adventure, fed by sailors' tales.

How a colony was born

The mother city, the metropolis, chose an expedition leader, the oikist. Before leaving, the oracle of Delphi was consulted, often naming the place in riddling terms. The colonists carried fire from the city's sacred hearth and founded an independent city, the apoikia, bound to the mother city by cults, kinship and often alliance, but self-governing.

The main colonies

Magna Graecia

Southern Italy and Sicily were so densely colonised they were called Megale Hellas, Great Greece. Some colonies grew richer and stronger than their mother cities: Syracuse under its tyrants was one of the largest cities of the Greek world, Sybaris was a byword for luxury (hence "sybarite"), Croton hosted the school of Pythagoras, Elea (Velia) the philosophical school of Parmenides and Zeno. Italy has some of the best-preserved Greek temples in the world: Paestum, Agrigento, Segesta, Selinunte.

Legacy

Through the colonies the Greek alphabet reached the Etruscans and Latins, and through them us. Wine, olives, coinage, theatre and philosophy spread across the Mediterranean. In Apulia and Calabria Griko or Grecanico, a language of Greek origin, is still spoken in some villages of the Salento and Aspromonte.

See also the history of Greece and the history of the Greek language.