Did You Know These 10 Iconic Cities Began As Greek Colonies?

 

 

From ancient times, without interruption, up until today, Greece, with its endless coastline, inlets and deep bays, which created natural harbours, has been a nation of seafarers.

The sea, instilled in the Greeks, or, as they were then known, the Hellenes, with their spirit of freedom, a curiosity, a yearning for adventure, a need to know what was out there, beyond the seemingly endless ‘wine – dark sea’ so described by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

 

 

When social upheaval struck ancient Greece, during the 8th–6th centuries BC, owing to over population, a lack of land, resources and food, for personal and political freedom and not least, due to  the natural trading instinct, inbred in Greeks, the sea was the way out; it was the answer, the answer, the escape route.

Greece set out to colonize the Mediterranean and so, taking advantage of its position as the crossroads of the ancient shipping lanes, the Phocaeans, or Fokaians (Ionian Greeks from the ancient city of Fokaia, on the western coast of Anatolia, modern-day Foça in Turkey), manned their ships, took up their oars and set sail for a better life.

 

 

Greek colonies sprung up in Sicily and southern Italy, and as far west as France and Spain and as far east as the Black Sea, where Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher tells us, they congregated like ‘frogs around a pond’.

In comparison with the Phoenicians, the Greeks had no desire to either invade or gain profit through violence and looting, instead, they came in peace; colonizing fed their desire and nautical instincts for adventure and the discovery of new lands provided places in which to establish trading posts; in Greek; emporium, plural emporia (one of the most important reasons for founding a colony), which were advantageous to all.

In this way, Greek culture was introduced to the Western world, through the pottery, olive oil, wine and grain which they brought with them.

 

Magna Graecia

 

 

The largest and most significant Greek colonies, which sprung up in the eighth century, bringing with them a taste of Greek life, were along the coastal areas of Southern Italy; Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily.

 Sybaris was the first and most important of the colonies on the coast of Southern Italy,

Collectively, these areas came to be known as Magna Graecia, Latin for ‘Greater Greece’ and they had an enormous influence over the locals, especially the Sicilians, who went as far as taking Greek culture as their own.

These were powerful Greek colonies that prospered greatly, some still exist today; Neapolis ‘New City’, now Naples, Syracuse, Akragas (Agrigento), Taras (Taranto), Rhegion (Reggio Calabria), Kroton (Crotone).

It’s not by chance Greeks and Italians have so much in common and are similar in many ways, not least their temperament; they more or less grew up together, side by side, in fact, there is a saying, popular in both Greece and Italy; ‘Una Faccia, Una Razza’, meaning ‘One face, one race’.

 

The Griko people

 

 

 In parts of Southern Italy, notably Calabria, Apulia, and Salento, a few small ethnic Greek minority groups; the Grikos, also known as Grecanici in Calabria (not more 50,000 in total), still exist.

They speak with their distinct Griko dialect and follow the Greek customs and traditions, passed down, through the centuries, from generation to generation.

 

 

There were around five hundred Greek colonies, many of which still exist today, consisting of around fifty thousand Greeks or more, throughout the ancient world, which, by the fifth century BC, made up about 40% of all Greeks in the Hellenic World (the period of ancient Greek history between 507 and 323 BCE).

Below I have listed ten well known cities, which you may not know have Greek origins; founded and once upon a time, inhabited by Greeks.

 

1. Sybaris – Sibari – Italy

 

Sybaris, a city in the region of Magna Graecia (Greater Greece), located on the Gulf of Taranto, Southern Italy, near present day Corigliano, was founded by Achaean (one of the four major tribes of Classical Greece; The Aeolians, Ionians and Dorians and the Achaeans) and Troezenian settlers (from Argolis, Peloponnese) in 720 BC.

Owing to its strategic position, fertile land and busy port, Sybaris was the ultimate get rich quick city where money flowed like water.

At its peak, Sybaris boasted upwards of three hundred thousand inhabitants, whom quickly became known for their immense wealth, hedonism and the excessive, pleasure – seeking, luxurious lifestyle  they led, they went as far as to have wine on tap from pipelines, leading from the country vineyards, bringing wine straight into their homes.

The decadent city of Sybaris was also known for its eclectic, diverse cuisine, so diverse in fact, that one of the first ever patent laws was drawn up in around 600 BC, in order to protect the rare culinary delights created by the chefs of the day.

A couple of other firsts were attributed to the sybarites; that of enjoying steam baths and taking your chamber pot along to banquets; well, there’s no sense in wasting precious eating and drinking time by having to nip outside when nature calls is there?

If you haven’t caught on yet, the words ‘sybarite’ and ‘sybaritic’ derive from the ancient Greek city of Sybaris.

Sybaritic – adjective – fond of sensuous luxury or pleasure; self-indulgent

“their opulent and sybaritic lifestyle” (Oxford Dictionary)

This gives much credence to the phrase; ‘party like a Greek’.

Sybaris was twice defeated by nearby Kroton, (now Crotone) in 510 and 448 BC and twice rebuilt, with the help of Athens; Sybaris was rebuilt for a third time but once again the Sybarites were thrown out and the city renamed Thurii.

Fed up of this repeating cycle, the Sybarites moved down river and founded a fourth Sybaris on the Traeis (Trionto) River.

The ruins of Sybaris and Thurii were forgotten and disappeared under sediment from the Crati River but were rediscovered and excavated in the 1960s by Donald Freeman Brown.

 Today they can be found southeast of Sibari, in the Province of Cosenza, the Calabria region of  Italy.

 

 

2. Syracuse –  Sicily – Italy

 

 

 Syracuse, a historic city, the birthplace of the Greek mathematician, Archimedes and one of the most important cities of Magna Graecia, was founded by Ancient Greek Corinthians in 734 or 733 BC, in southeast Sicily.

Syracuse was originally founded on the small island of Ortygia, chosen for its natural harbours and spring water but rapidly advanced onto the to the main island, both communities were connected by a man-made causeway.

In ancient times, Syracuse, which Cicero, the Roman philosopher, thought of as ‘the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all’, was one of the major powers of the Mediterranean world.

Syracuse eventually became part of the Roman Republic and the Byzantine Empire and from 663 – 669 acted as the capital of the Byzantine Empire under Emperor Constantine II.

Syracuse came to be outdone by Palermo as the capital of Sicily which united with Naples to create The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the largest sovereign state in Italy prior to Italian unification in 1860.

Today Syracuse, listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, has a population of about 125,000 and numerous historical sites which attract crowds of tourists each year.

 

 

3. Neapolis – Napoli – Naples – Italy

 

 

 The city of Naples situated on the Gulf of Naples, on the western coast of southern Italy, one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in the world and one of the most ancient cities in Europe was founded by Greeks in the ninth century BC, when Greek sailors from the island of Rhodes, established a small commercial port called Parthenope, the name of a siren in Greek mythology meaning ‘Pure Eyes’, on the island of Megaride.

In the 6th century BC, Parthenope became Neápolis (New City in Greek), which, owing to the influence of another powerful Greek colony; Syracuse, quickly expanded to become the most important and powerful city and trade centre of Magna Graecia.

Naples was regarded by the Romans as the epitome of Greek culture and was chosen by many Roman emperors, including Claudius and Tiberius, as a holiday destination.

The people of Naples kept their Greek language, customs and traditions long after it became a Roman city.

In 1995, the historic centre of Naples was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, stating:

‘Naples is one of the most ancient cities in Europe, whose contemporary urban fabric preserves the elements of its long and eventful history. The rectangular grid layout of the ancient Greek foundation of Neapolis is still discernible and has indeed continued to provide the basic form for the present-day urban fabric of the Historic Centre of Naples, one of the foremost Mediterranean port cities. From the Middle Ages to the 18th century, Naples was a focal point in terms of art and architecture, expressed in its ancient forts, the royal ensembles such as the Royal Palace of 1600, and the palaces and churches sponsored by the noble families’.

 

 

4. Massalia – Marseille – France

 

 

Massalia, today Marseille in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, southern France, founded in 600 BC, by Greeks from from Phocaea (modern Foça,Turkey), became one of the major trading ports of the ancient world and is now the second-largest city in France after Paris and is still one of the biggest commercial ports of Europe.

Was it not for the Greek seafarers and explorers, who founded Massalia, the most dominant of all Greek settlements of southern Gaul, as a place to trade, bringing with them Greek olive oil, wine, and spices, French cuisine may never have acquired the excellent reputation it has today.

 France, now the world’s biggest wine industry, has a lot to thank the ancient Greeks for.

Marseille’s easy access to the Mediterranean Sea made it a cosmopolitan city which continued to flourish as a Gallo-Roman city, keeping its place as a major trading post even after being captured by the Visigoths in the fifth century.

A large number of its population was lost in 1720 during the Great Plague of Marseille but the city managed to recover and became the focal point of the French revolution in 1792 and though originating in Strasbourg, the French National Anthem, was first sung in Paris by volunteers from Marseille and so took the name; La Marseillaise.

Today, Marseille is a major centre of art and history with a plethora of museums, art galleries, ancient buildings and churches of historical interest and home to the most famous soaps in the world.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, tells us of how Marseille came to be a Greek city, in an ancient Greek myth around the marriage of Gyptis and Protis.

When Protis, son of Euxenous, a Greek from Phocaea, married Gyptis (or Petta), daughter of Nanos, chief of the Ségobriges, a Celto-Ligurian people, whose capital was Lacydon, the current Old Port of Marseille, the father of the bride Nanos, as a dowry, presented  Protos with a piece of land which was to become the city of Massalia.

 

 

5. Nikaia – Nice – France

 

 

 Nice, located on the French Riviera, on the south east coast of France was founded around 350 BC by the same ancient Greek colonists from Phocaea in Anatolia, who founded Marseille and named it Nikaia, after the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, in acknowledgment of a victory over the Ligurians in North West of Italy.

 

 

Nikaia soon became one of the busiest trading ports on the Ligurian coast.

The city, for centuries under the control of Savoy, again became a part of France from 1792 to 1815, as the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia and was again attached to France in 1860.

Today Nice, one of France’s most beautiful tourist spots, is the second-largest French city on the Mediterranean and the second-largest city on the Côte d’Azur after Marseille.

 

6. Emporion  – Ampurias – Empúries – Spain

 

 

Empúries, formerly Ampurias, a town on the Mediterranean coast in Catalonia, Spain, was founded in 575 BC by Greek colonists from Phocaea, who named it  Emporion, which in Greek means market or trading place.

Emporion never reached the status of Massalia (Marseille), another Greek colony in Southern France but it did become the main commercial settlement for all the north east, and Greece’s major town on the Iberian Peninsula.

After the invasion by Hannibal, the Carthaginian general in 218 BC, the city was occupied by the Romans.

The city was abandoned in the Early Middle Ages, as the exposed coastal position made it easy prey for pirates.

 Greek ruins have been found midway between the Costa Brava town of L’Escala and the village of Sant Martí.

 

 

7. Cyrene – Cyrenaica – Libya – North Africa

 

 

 Cyrene, a fertile valley in Jebel Akhdar uplands, near present-day Shahhat, Libya, was founded in 631 BC as a settlement of Greeks from the island of Thera (Santorini).

The city, which took its name from the spring of wisdom; Kyre, which the Greeks had dedicated to the god Apollo, was the oldest and most important of the cities established in the region by the ancient Greeks which include Barca, Euesperides (modern Benghazi), Taucheira, and Apollonia.

Legend has it that Grinus, the then king of of Thera, as was the norm in those days, had visited Pythia at the oracle at Delphi, who advised him to set sail for Libya and establish a new Greek city there.

Grinus forgot about Pythia’s advice, until years later when a terrific drought hit Thira, causing all crops to wither and decay, prompted another visit to the oracle, where Pythis reminded Grinus of what she had previously told him, only this time, she specified where the new city must be located; in the land of Cyrene.

This time, Grinus must have taken heed of the priestess of Delphi and after a couple of years of confusion and false starts, Cyrene was established which came to be the leading town of Libya.

Around the third or fourth century BC, Aristippus, a student of Socrates, founded a famous philosophical school there, earning the city of Cyrene the nickname of ‘The Athens of Africa’.

Cyrene reached its peak under its own kings in the 5th century BC and in 460 BC, it became a republic.

In 1982, Cyrene became a UNESCO World Heritage site but sadly, Cyrene today ranks among the List’s most neglected and endangered sites in the Mediterranean owing to poor restoration and looting of its Greek artifacts.

 

 

 8. Alexandria – Egypt

 

Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, the third-largest city in Egypt after Cairo and Giza, is the largest city on the Mediterranean and one of the most important Hellenistic cultural centers of the ancient world.

Alexander the Great, one of the most influential Greeks, shortly after creating the city of Alexandria, left Egypt and never returned to see his dream city become the largest city in the world.

Alexandria, Egypt’s main Greek city, designed by the architect Dinocrates of Rhodes, boasted some of the most astonishing architectural gems ever created, including the Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which for centuries, was one of the tallest man-made structures in the world.

 

 

One of the largest and most influential libraries of the ancient world; The Great Library of Alexandria, was also established here, which went a long way in helping the city of Alexandria earn the reputation as the capital of knowledge and learning.

 

 

Alexandria remained the capital of Egypt for nearly a thousand years, until the Muslim conquest in AD 641.

 

  9. Byzantium – Byzantion – Constantinople – Istanbul – Turkey

 

 

 Byzantium or Byzantion, today known as Istanbul in Turkey but for Greeks, it’s forever Constantinople, is an ancient Greek city, founded by Greeks from Megara (a historic town in West Attica, Greece), in 657 BC.

A trading city, located at the only entrance to the Black Sea and the only city in the word located on two continents, Europe and Asia, Byzantium was named after King Byzas, leader and founder of the city.

The city retained the name Byzantium for over a thousand years, until 330 AD, when Constantine the Great renamed it Constantinople after himself and declared it the capital of the Byzantine Empire.

 After over two thousand years of Greek rule, Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453 and is now known as Istanbul, the largest port and city of modern day Turkey, the Greeks left their mark though, the history and culture of the city is predominantly Greek.

The iconic Greek Orthodox Church of Hagia Sophia, designed by the Greek geometers Isidor of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles, built in 537, is a magnet for tourists, drawing thousands to Istanbul each year.

 

 

10. Halicarnassus – Halikarnas – Bodrum – Turkey

 

 

 Halicarnassus, one of the great trade centers of Anatolia, was an ancient Ionian Greek city, at what is now Bodrum in Turkey, located in southwest Caria on the Ceramic Gulf.

There’s a bit of a debate, between historians, about the exact details of the founding of Halicarnassus, they all agree though, that it’s a Dorian colony, one of the four major ancient Greek ethnic groups, (Dorians, Aeolians, Achaeans, and Ionians) and figures on its coins, such as the heads of Medusa, Athena and Poseidon confirm this.

Halicarnassus was named after the famous Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, or the Tomb of Mausolus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, built between 353 and 350 BC by Artemisia, for her husband, the ruler of the city, King Mausolus, after his death.

 

 

The rulers of Halicarnassus, Artemisia and Mausolus, transformed the city with architecture and infrastructure; city walls, public buildings, roads and temples, making it the pride of Anatolia.

The city was attacked by Alexander the Great in 334 BCE (the famous Siege of Halicarnassus), where Alexander defeated the Persian commander, Memnon of Rhodes and gave the city back the government of Caria, under the rule of Ada of Caria, who formally adopted him as her son so that his blood-line would always reign in the city he had won back from the Persians

After the death of Alexander, the city passed to Antigonus I in 311 BC, then to Lysimachus after 301 BC and to the Ptolemies from 281–197 BC.

 Halicarnassus was briefly an independent kingdom until 129 BCE when it came under Roman rule.

 By the time of the early Christian era, not much was left of the city, in 1404 the Knights of St. John used the ruins of the Mausoleum to build their castle in Bodrum.

 

 

The ruins of the city were excavated in 1856–57 and again in 1865 and much of its great wall, the gymnasium, a late colonnade, a temple platform, rock-cut tombs and the site of the Mausoleum, can still be seen today.

 

 

Not far from Halicarnassus, at Ortakent, today a busy beach resort of Bodrum, over forty Mycenaean tombs have been discovered dating from the end of the fifteenth century BC to 1200 AD.

Artifacts found in the tombs can today be viewed in the museum of Bodrum Castle.

 

 Today:

Greece still rules the waves!

 

Who would have thought, looking at a map of the world today and seeing the tiny country of Greece, that it once controlled such a large part of the then, mostly unknown, ancient world?

 

 

Greece, through colonization, introduced so much to the world; art, architecture, philosophy, democracy and the Olympic Games, to name but a few.

Greeks, people of the sea, still rule the oceans of the world, they ride the waves and weather the storms, protected by Saint Nicholas and watched over by Poseidon, Greek god of the sea.

 

 

Greeks, masters of seamanship, have created a maritime tradition second to none; a survey taken in 2018 shows Greece remains dominant in global shipping and according to Lloyd’s list the Greek Merchant Navy controls the world’s largest merchant fleet, in terms of tonnage, and a fleet of 5,626 Greek-owned ships also ranks in at number one for a variety of ships, including tankers and bulk carriers.

 

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