Wandering Greeks (11 page)

²
My count is from Hansen and Nielsen (2004, index 27 [pp. 1390–96]). It includes both foundations and refoundations. The numbers are necessarily approximate.

³
Recent bone analysis conducted by anthropologists at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History has revealed that the English settlers at Jamestown, Virginia, had to resort to cannibalism to survive the harsh winter of 1609–10, and we need hardly doubt that Greek settlers would have been equally hard pressed.

4
THE PORTABLE
POLIS

Uprooting the City

An overseas settlement constituted a select number of pioneers who agreed to found a new
polis
in the hope of preserving or bettering their lives. In the face of an overwhelming threat to their livelihood, however, perhaps due to pressure from hostile neighbors or as the result of an environmental catastrophe, all the inhabitants of an existing
polis
might take the radical step of abandoning their homes and relocating elsewhere, a process that is generally known as
metoikêsis
or
anachorêsis
.

It is easily overlooked that the
polis
was inherently portable, since our literary sources emphasize the predilection for permanence and continuity. As we shall see, however, permanence and stability were not invariably the norm. We know for a fact that the Phocaeans, the Teians, the Clazomenians, the Ephesians, the Milesians, the Samians, and the Athenians, as well as the inhabitants of many Sicilian cities, either underwent relocation or at least seriously considered the option, and that is aside from the various peoples who were deported, whom we shall discuss in the next chapter.

The Greek
polis
did not relocate only as a single unit, reconstituting itself in a form similar to its previous instantiation. It did so also in association with other
poleis
by a process known as synoecism, though we should note that the word
sunoikismos
(literally “the joining together of households”) does not occur until the hellenistic period. A synoecism took place when two or more neighboring
poleis
or, alternatively, two or more neighboring villages consolidated their inhabitants in a single entity, either by incorporating them into an existing
polis
(or
poleis
) or
by combining to build an entirely new
megalopolis
(literally “big
polis
”). Such a process had two quite separate aspects, one political, requiring the assimilation of citizens from different states into a single community, and the other physical, geographical, and architectural (Hornblower 1982, 83).

There must have been many occasions, however, when vested interests prevented the inhabitants of a city-state that was facing assault and possible destruction from reaching an agreement about what course of action to adopt, with the result that a stand-off between two factions occurred. A case in point involves the Cimmerians, a people who originally lived to the north of the Caucasus. When the Scythians were about to invade their territory, the Cimmerians held a debate about what action to take. The
dêmos
advocated flight, whereas the aristocracy voted to stay put. Eventually, the aristocracy were forced to commit collective suicide in order to avoid a worse fate at the hands of the invaders (Hdt. 4.11). Though it seems highly unlikely that the Cimmerians argued the merits of relocation in the manner indicated, debates of this sort may well have taken place when a Greek city-state was threatened with subjugation.

Likewise when a
polis
fell to an invader, those who could do so would escape in the
mêlée
and attempt to relocate elsewhere, which is what Aeneas and his companions did when Troy fell to the Greeks. Vergil's description of the flight of Aeneas with his family at the end of
Aeneid
book 2 is the most graphic account we possess from antiquity of the consequences of such a catastrophic event. The prospect of escaping in such circumstances would have been extremely bleak, especially if the refugees included a cumbrous assortment of noncombatants, including women, children, and the elderly. At sea, the refugees would have been vulnerable to pirates and tempests, whereas on land they could easily fall prey to bandits and wild animals.

The portability of the
polis
is indicated by the fact that those seeking to relocate continued to identify themselves as citizens of their original
polis
until they had succeeded in establishing new roots elsewhere, at which point they would usually assume a new name. Aeneas and his companions describe themselves as Trojans until they make peace with the indigenous population of Italy and agree to be called Latins. In
other words, a
polis
remained intact so long as there were citizens to identify themselves with it, irrespective of whether it existed in a fixed location. This practice—sense of ownership, we might call it—tells us much about the nature of Greek citizenship and Greek identity.

It goes without saying that relocation would have been extremely traumatic, especially when it was forced upon a population virtually overnight. This was equally true whether it came about as the result of a collective decision reached after considerable debate and self-searching or whether it was imposed from the outside. Inevitably, some of the refugees would be forced to abandon a family member before they departed, while others would become separated from a loved one along the road, just as Aeneas loses his wife, Creusa, in his haste to escape. And once a family member was left behind, there was little chance of him or her being found again. It should come as no surprise that a persistent theme running through accounts of resettlement is the reluctance of a sizable percentage of the population to participate in the venture, rather than to await the arrival of the enemy, on the grounds that life was no longer worth living. That is precisely the mental state of Aeneas's father, Anchises, when Troy is being burned to the ground—before the occurrence of portents that induce him to see a future beyond Troy. His is a mental state drawn from life.

Instances of Relocation in Early Greek History

Relocation was known to Homer, who reports that the Phaeacians under the leadership of King Nausithoüs chose to abandon their original foundation and settle in Scheria, “far away from men who eat bread.” They took this decision because they were being harried by the Cyclopes, a people who were “greater in strength” than they were (
Od
. 6.4–10). Nausithoüs's decision paid off—at least in the short term. The Phaeacians led an idyllic, if cloistered, existence. That was until the shipwrecked Odysseus fetched up on their shores and inadvertently destroyed the island's ecology, since his hosts had angered Poseidon by harboring the accursed refugee. Surrounded by an impenetrable wall
after his departure, they will suffer the fate of never being able to seek a homeland elsewhere—a nightmare scenario for a community now denied a “home from home.”

Homer's brief reference to the relocation of the Phaeacians to Scheria, although imaginary, reflects a contemporary reality. Similarly, “barbaric” neighbors were threatening the East Greeks at the time when the poems were taking shape (Demand 1990, 28–33). It was pressure from the Scythians that initially drove the Cimmerians to abandon their ancestral lands and plunder the land the Greeks were inhabiting (Hdt. 1.6.3). Their departure produced a power vacuum that was filled by the Lydians, who, unlike the Cimmerians, were bent on systematic conquest and domination of the territory they entered. It was to escape the Lydian advance that shortly before 650 some of the inhabitants of Colophon decided to relocate to Siris, a city in the instep of southern Italy—one of the earliest instances of long-distance relocation on record (Arist. fr. 584 Rose; Ath.
Deipn
. 12.523c).

The Persians, too, if we are to believe Herodotus, contemplated relocating to a more abundant and agreeable land in the early days of the reign of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid dynasty (9.122). Cyrus, however, rejected the suggestion on the grounds that rugged terrain produces brave men, whereas terrain that is easier to work produces weaklings. In consequence, the Persians “chose to rule while inhabiting a poor land, rather than be enslaved to others while cultivating the plains.”And that, incidentally, is how Herodotus chooses to end his
History
, which indicates the importance he attached to the theme of relocation. Likewise, as we shall see next, when the Persians began advancing against the Ionians, two city-states chose to relocate rather than submit to their rule.

The Relocation of the Phocaeans

The first to do so were the Phocaeans, whose lengthy and convoluted migration Herodotus reports in detail (1.164–65). Phocaea, modern Foça, was an Ionian city on the western coast of Anatolia that lay to the
north of the Gulf of Smyrna. Some ten or fifteen years before the Persians had begun encroaching on the region, the Phocaeans had received an offer from Arganthonius, king of wealthy Tartessus, to relocate (see earlier,
chapter 3
). They declined, seemingly because the prospect of an easy life outside their homeland held no appeal for them. So instead, and with Arganthonius's help, they erected a wall around their city, intending initially to resist the Persians at all costs.

When the Persians began to advance to the coast around the middle of the sixth century, Phocaea became one of the first Ionian
poleis
on their hit-list. It soon became evident that resistance was hopeless. Just as the Persians were poised to capture the city, however, their Median general Harpagus promised to leave the Phocaeans alone on condition that they agreed to destroy one wall tower and one house—a symbolic token of their submission to Persian rule. Playing for time, the Phocaeans requested a day to debate his proposal. Harpagus agreed, and in the meantime they hastily put on board ship all their women, children, and movable property (including, we are told, their gold and silver statues), and set sail. The result was that the Persians gained possession “of a city that was emptied of people,” as Herodotus (1.164.3) evocatively put it.

This was not the end of the matter. For many years the Phocaeans were a people without a homeland, compelled to suffer a string of disappointments. They first offered to buy the nearby Oenoussae Islands from the Chians, evidently because they wished to resettle close to their original homeland. The Chians turned down their offer, however, fearing that the Phocaeans, who were a highly successful mercantile community, would eventually pose a threat to their own commercial interests. So with considerable daring the refugees returned to Phocaea, slew the Persian garrison that had been left in charge of their city, and laid a solemn curse on all those who refused to accompany them in search of a new homeland. This they did by sinking a mass of iron into the sea and making everyone take a solemn oath not to return to Phocaea “until the iron rose to the surface again,”—that is, never. They now saw themselves as a people without a homeland, though they continued to identify themselves as Phocaeans, which, as we have seen, was commonly the case when a
polis
became portable.

We learn much about the psychological toll of relocation from the fact that neither their oath nor fear of the Persians was sufficient to make all the Phocaeans keep their word. Soon after they set sail for Alalia, a
polis
on the west coast of Corsica that had been founded some twenty years beforehand by their former compatriots, half of the refugees were overcome by “a pitiful longing for their city and the customs of their country” (1.165.3). In consequence, the homesick half detached itself from the main fleet and sailed back to Phocaea. Though we do not know what became of them, it is highly doubtful they escaped the clutches of the Persians. Yet such was their longing—pitiful indeed—that they preferred servitude or even death to the hazards and travails of relocation.

The more enterprising half sailed on and established themselves in Alalia, as they had planned to do from the start. Though their legal status in Alalia is unclear, the enlarged settlement seems to have constituted a synoecism of sorts. The fact, moreover, that the new settlers were permitted to establish sanctuaries to their gods provides evidence of their integration. For five years or so the combined population made a livelihood by plundering and raiding. In time, however, their actions provoked the anger of both the Etruscans and the Carthaginians, who joined forces against them. A naval battle ensued, in which the Phocaeans got the better of their enemies. It was, however, a Pyrrhic victory, since 40 of their pentecontors were seized and the remaining 20 were rendered unfit for battle. These ships now returned to Alalia, where, after picking up all the women and children, the majority sailed to Rhegium on the toe of Italy. Since a pentecontor could accommodate about 80 persons at most, the maximum possible number of refugees would have been 1,600. At least some of those who failed to get on board were stoned to death by the Etruscans. The Delphic oracle later ordered the Etruscans to atone for their crime by establishing a hero cult in the victims' honor.

On arrival at Rhegium, they encountered a man from Posidonia, who helpfully informed them that Delphi had not intended them to establish a settlement but only a hero cult on Corsica. At his suggestion they set sail once again and succeeded in taking possession of the
deserted city of Elea, which lay a few miles to the south of Posidonia. No doubt it was in Posidonia's interest to have allies who could help them in their struggle against the neighboring Italic peoples.