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Early Colonisation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

G. L. Cawkwell
G. L. Cawkwell
Affiliation:
University College, Oxford
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Extract

It is commonly supposed that in the eighth century B.c. there was a ‘population explosion’ in Greece which moved the Greeks to send out colonies. A. J. Graham in the Cambridge Ancient History iii, 3 (1982) is typical: ‘The basic active cause of the colonizing movement was overpopulation’; ‘at the very time when the Archaic colonising movement began, in the second half of the eighth century, there was a marked increase in population in Greece’ (p. 157). The presumed connection between overpopulation and colonisation is not immediately obvious. The evidence for the population explosion is found in the increased number of burials in Attica and the Argolid, but Athens sent out no colony before the very end of the seventh century and Argos probably none at all, certainly none in this period. So special explanations have to be formulated for Athens' and Argos' lack of colonies while their postulated ‘population explosion’ is presumed for Greece as a whole and called in to explain the burst of colonising in the eighth century. The hypothesis is not used for seventh-century colonisation when the number of burials declines.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , December 1992 , pp. 289 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1992

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References

1 Snodgrass, A. M., Archaic Greece (1980), p. 10.Google Scholar

2 After the period of migration, the first Athenian colony was to Sigeum, if indeed it is right to call it a colony, shortly before 600 (cf. Pros. Att. s.v. Φρ⋯νων). If there is any truth in Strabo's assertions of Argive origin for Aspendus (14.4.2 667c), Tarsus (14.5.12 673c), Tralles (14.1.42 649c) and Curium in Cyprus (14.6.3 683c), it belongs either to the world of the migrations (cf. Thuc. 2.68 on Amphilochian Argos) or to the Hellenistic period (cf. SEG 34 [1984], 282Google Scholar, a decree of the late fourth century according the Aspendians Argive citizenship, and Spawforth, A. J. and Walker, S., JRS 76 [1986], 101 and n. 22).Google Scholar

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13 Pace How and Wells Commentary ad loc. (‘The number of colonists must have been fixed. This is omitted by Herodotus, unless it has fallen out of his text.’), and Jeffery, L. H., ‘The Pact of the First Settlers at Cyrene’, Historia 10 (1961), 139Google Scholar (‘The next phrase of the Greek requires a numeral to make sense’). Having supplemented the text of Herodotus, she proceeded to supplement the text of the Foundation Stele (Meiggs–Lewis, GHI no. 5) to match it.

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18 That the colony went from Delphi was asserted by Timaeus (FGrHist 566 F 43). Pace Parke-Wormell, op. cit. (n. 17), i.54f., we do not know that Antiochus (FGrHist 555 F 9) ‘omitted all reference to the dedication as a motive’.

19 Dionysius' ultimate source, according to Jacoby, FGrHist III b (Kommentar) 380, was Hellanicus.

20 Cf. Parke-Wormell, op. cit. (n. 17), i.52f.

21 …στενοχωρ⋯ᾳ τιν⋯ πολιορκηθ⋯ν γ⋯ς ἤ τισιν ἂλλοις τοιο⋯τοις παθ⋯μασιν ⋯ναγκασθ⋯ν.

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25 The text is conveniently to be found in Edelstein, L., The Hippocratic Oath (Baltimore, 1943).Google Scholar

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29 Cf. Walbank ad loc.

30 For the Pelasgian theft of Athenian women, Hdt. 6.138 and for the Messenian theft of Spartan women, Strabo 6.1.6 257c, and 8.4.9 362c. Sallares, op. cit. (n. 4), p. 133 fastens on comments of Plato and Aristotle, which may be quite misleading for Archaic Greece.

31 Engels, D., ‘The Problem of Female Infanticide in the Greco-Roman World’, C.Ph. 75 (1980), 112–20CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed argued that a high rate of female infanticide could not have occurred without serious decline of population. Harris, W. V., ‘The Theoretical Possibility of Extensive Infanticide in the Graeco-Roman World’, CQ 32 (1982), 114–16CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed countered. Engels returned in CQ 34 (1984), 386–93Google Scholar. The fact of infanticide as a means of keeping population under control is not in doubt. Sallares, op. cit. (n. 4), pp. 102, 158ff. argues that infanticide did not become common until the Hellenistic period and that it did not happen in Classical Athens (133ff. and 151ff.). Classical Athens was comparatively prosperous; the world of Hesiod was grimmer. Evidence for size of families in the Attic orators is not relevant to the eighth and seventh centuries.

32 Cf. Whittaker, C. R., PCPhS 20 (1974), 69Google Scholar for the numbers involved in the foundation of Carthage.

33 Ἀπολλων⋯α πρώτη π⋯λις Ἰλλυρ⋯ας ἥν ᾤκουν Ἰλλυριο⋯ κατ᾽ Ἐπ⋯δαμνον. ὓστερον διακοσ⋯ων Kορινθ⋯ων ⋯ποικ⋯α εἰς αὐτ⋯ν ⋯στ⋯λη ἧς ⋯γεῖτο Γ⋯λαξ, ὅς Γυλακ⋯αν ὠν⋯μασε.

34 Since Blakeway penned the phrase (BSA 33 [1932–1933], 202)Google Scholar, opinion has swung away from the notion of pre-colonial trade, but there is enough to suggest that the western world was well enough known before the colonies were founded. Cf. Coldstream, J. N., Geometric Greece, p. 221Google Scholar (‘During the first generation (c. 800–770 B.c.) and before the founding of the first colonies, Euboean merchants had already penetrated the Tyrrhenian sea. and were trading with the inhabitants of Etruria and Campania’), and 233 for ‘the only clear evidence of Greek visitors before the arrival of the first colonists’.

35 Cf. Buchner, G., Expedition 8 (1966), 4–12Google Scholar, and Coldstream, J. N., op. cit. (n. 34), p. 226.Google Scholar

36 The Greeks Overseas, p. 166.Google Scholar

37 Strabo 5.4.9 247c speaks of εὐκαρπ⋯α. Coldstream, J. N., I.c. ‘The volcanic soil of the island is – and was – suitable only for the cultivation of the vine.’Google Scholar

38 Ἀϕορ⋯α described both bad harvest and crop-failure; cf. Xen. Poroi 4.9, where war is more serious than ⋯ϕορ⋯αι ‘in as much as the land is not worked’.

39 Cf. Garnsey, P., Famine and Food-supply in the Graeco-Roman World, p. 11Google Scholar for the frequency of failure of the wheat and the barley crops in modern Greece.

40 Braudel, F., The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II(English translation, Collins, 1972), pp. 245, 576, 593.Google Scholar

41 Cf. Hdt. 2.13.3.

42 Cf. Vandier, J., La Famine dans l'Egypte ancienne (Cairo, 1936).Google Scholar

43 For droughts in Palestine, Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 39), pp. 15 and 38.

44 ‘It is impossible to draw any historical inferences from the story of “Joseph and his brethren.”’ Noth, M., The History of Israel 2 (London, 1960), p. 118.Google Scholar

45 CAH ii3, 2.360f., 369.

46 At 1.44.9 Pausanias said that this drought had befallen ‘the Greeks’.

47 From Xen. Hell. 5.4.56 and 6.1.11, Thessaly would appear to be an exporter of corn; cf. Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 39), pp. 71f., 187, 195. The comparative amounts on the Cyrene inscription are curious. Athens, by far the most populous city, received 100,000 medimni, Sicyon, a comparatively small state, 30,000, in Thessaly Larisa 50,000 and Atras, a very minor Perrhaebian town, 10,000, and so on. There is a useful map on p. 160 of Garnsey, showing both the incidence of gifts and the remarkable absences; e.g. if Tanagra, Plataea, Delphi, Opus received, why did not other places within that circle? The gifts may reflect the fitfulness of the drought, but it is more likely that the beneficiaries were the states that had political relations with Cyrene.

48 One may note that Aristotle spoke of widespread drought as a regular enough occurrence. In a fragment of his treatise On Signs (240) he averred that when there is a drought ‘in the islands’ birds migrate to where they can sustain themselves, and farmers take the arrival of ravens from the islands as a ‘sign’ of drought and bad harvest; that is, a drought in the islands is likely to make itself felt still more widely.

49 Cf. Dover's note on Thuc. 6.2.5 in A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, iv.Google Scholar

50 But see Coldstream, J. N., Geometric Greece, p. 185.Google Scholar

51 The First Messenian War is a somewhat movable feast. Cf. Coldstream, op. cit. (n. 50), p. 163 and CAH iii2, 3.323f. A date in the mid-730s for its commencement seems to be generally accepted.

52 Cf. Ernst Meyer, RE va.l col. 492.

53 Cf. Hesiod, fr. 128 Merkelbach–West.

54 Cf. Griffin, A., Sikyon, p. 30.Google Scholar