Greek colonization movement, 8th–6th centuriesBCE

Abstract

The importance of the process commonly known as the “Greek colonization movement” is best illustrated by two maps, both showing the Greek‐speaking areas in antiquity: the first at the time the movement was about to start, around 750 BCE (Figure 1), the second when it was nearing its completion around 550 BCE (Figure 2). Over a period of just 200 years, Greeks expanded from their original homelands (limited to the southern tip of the Balkans, the Aegean islands, the coast of Asia Minor, and Cyprus) to form an almost uninterrupted chain of well over 100 settlements around much of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea , a “fringe woven around the territories inhabited by barbarians,” to use Cicero's words ( Republic II, 4: 9). (See the list in Tsetskhladze 2006: lxvii–lxxiii, to which we can add Dikaia in the northern Aegean [Tiverios 2008: 24–25] and Orikos in the Adriatic [Pseudo‐Scymnus: 442–4], both said to be Euboean foundations.)