Greek colonisation
Many Greek colonies were strategically positioned near coastlines to facilitate trade, communication, and access to maritime resources.
These colonies played a crucial role in expanding Greek culture, trade networks, and influence throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions.
While some colonies were established inland for various reasons, coastal locations were generally more common due to the Greeks' strong connection to the sea.
The Greeks started colonising around the beginning of the 8th century BC when the Euboeans founded Pithecusae in Southern Italy and Olynthus in Chalcidice, Greece.
[3] At the end of the 8th century, Euboea fell into decline with the outbreak of the Lelantine War but colonial foundation continued by other Greeks such as the Ionians and Corinthians.
The most important settlements of the Euboeans in Chalcidice were Olynthos (which was settled in collaboration with the Athenians), Torone, Mende, Sermyle, Aphytis and Cleonae in the peninsula of Athos.
During the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians with the Hagnon, son of Nikias founded the city of Ennea Hodoi (Ἐννέα ὁδοὶ), meaning nine roads, at the current location of the "Hill 133" north of Amphipolis in Serres.
In 340 BC, while Alexander the Great was regent of Macedon, he founded the city of Alexandropolis Maedica after defeating a local Thracian tribe.
[7] Magna Graecia[8] was the name given by the Romans to the coastal areas of Southern Italy in the present-day Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily which were extensively settled by Greeks.
[10] The first great migratory wave directed towards the western Mediterranean was that of the Euboeans aimed at the Gulf of Naples who, after Pithecusae (on the isle of Ischia), the oldest Greek settlement in Italy, founded Cumae nearby, their first colony on the mainland, and then in the Strait of Messina, Zancle in Sicily, and nearby on the opposite coast, Rhegium.
[11] The second wave was of the Achaeans who concentrated initially on the Ionian coast (Metapontion, Poseidonia, Sybaris, Kroton),[12][13] shortly before 720 BC.
[14] At an unknown date between the 8th and 6th centuries BC the Athenians, of Ionian lineage, founded Scylletium (near today's Catanzaro).
The Corinthians founded important overseas colonies on the sea lanes to Southern Italy and the west which succeeded in making them the foremost emporia of the western side of the Mediterranean.
Important colonies of Corinth included Leucada, Astacus, Anactoreum, Actium, Ambracia, and Corcyra - all in modern-day western Greece.
The fact that about the 6th century BC the citizens of Epidamnus constructed a Doric-style treasury at Olympia confirms that the city was among the richest of the Ancient Greek world.
[22] Further west, colonists from the Greek city-state Paros in 385 BC founded the colony Pharos on the island of Hvar in the Adriatic, on the site of the present-day Stari Grad in Croatia.
[24] Although the Greeks had at one point called the Black Sea shore "inhospitable", according to ancient sources they eventually created 70 to 90 colonies.
In the area of Propontis, the Megarans founded the cities of Astacus in Bithynia, Chalcedonia and Byzantium which occupied a privileged position.
In the south of the Black Sea the most important colony was Sinope which according to prevailing opinion was founded by Miletus some time around the middle of the 7th century BC.
[26] Sinope was founded with a series of other colonies in the Pontic region: Trebizond, Cerasus, Cytorus, Cotyora, Cromne, Pteria, Tium, etc.
Further north from the Danube delta the Greeks colonised the islet, probably then a peninsula, of Barythmenis (modern Berezan) which evolved into the colony of Borysthenes in the next century.
The most important colony founded on the southern shore of the Black Sea was a Megaran and Boeotian foundation: Heraclea Pontica in 560-550 BC.
[27] On the north shore of the Black Sea Miletus was the first to start with Pontic Olbia and Panticapaeum (modern Kerch).
On the Sea of Azov (Lake Maiotis to the ancients) they founded Tanais (in Rostov), Tyritace, Myrmeceum, Cecrine and Phanagoria, the last being a colony of the Teians.
On the eastern shore, which was known in ancient times as Colchis, today in Georgia and the autonomous region of Abkhazia, the Greeks founded the cities of Phasis and Dioscouris.
The ancient Greek settlement called Manitra of the 4th-3rd centuries BC near the town of Baherove in Crimea[31] was discovered in 2018.
In North Africa, on the peninsula of Kyrenaika, colonists from Thera founded Kyrene, which evolved into a very powerful city in the region.
The Greek colony of Posideion on the promontory Ras al-Bassit was colonised just to the south of the Orontes estuary later in the 7th century BC.
[34] Diodorus Siculus mentions Meschela (Μεσχέλα), a city on the northern coast of Africa, founded by the Greeks after the Trojan War.
As related by Herodotus, a local king summoned the Phokaians to found a colony in the region and rendered meaningful aid in the fortification of the city.
