Wandering Greeks (9 page)

Anyone who refuses to sail if he is sent out by the city shall be liable to the death penalty and his property will be taken from him. Anyone who receives him or harbors him, whether he be the father aiding the son or a brother his brother, shall suffer the same punishment as the man who refuses to sail.

I know of no other example of pioneers being threatened with death should they attempt to return home, but the Therans are unlikely to have been exceptional in passing such a measure. The 279 settlements that flourished (not to mention the unknown number that failed) would have included many pioneers who, even if not compelled by the state to abandon their homes, did so only with grave misgivings. Irrespective of whether the fourth-century copy replicates the language of the seventh-century original or not, the proviso strikes a highly plausible note, since “no-one leaves homes and embarks on colonization for fun” (Graham 1982a, 157).

Imagine for a moment the plight of an impoverished farmer, living in a city-state in which famine is beginning to take its toll. The harvest
has failed for two or three years in a row and all his supplies are exhausted. An emergency assembly is held to discuss the crisis and at the end a vote is called. The majority decision is that some of the population will be required to emigrate. The farmer has no alternative. Starvation is staring him in the face. Volunteers are called for. Unless enough people step forward, the state will introduce conscription, at which point the terms under which pioneers depart may be far less favorable. He considers his options. As if the threat of starvation is not enough to motivate him, those advocating emigration hold out the enticing prospect of a better life that will elevate his social status overnight.

The fact that the pioneers often went out “on equal and fair terms,” as inscriptions state, indicates that in theory all social distinctions were abolished as soon as the expedition departed. It also suggests that the majority of volunteers came from the lower classes, like the “wretches from all over Greece,” whom Arichilochus mentions. After all, it was they who had the least to lose and the most to gain. Physical fitness was the primary qualification in the selection process. Those who were feeble or past their prime would have been a distinct liability. Mental resilience was also essential. It goes without saying that pioneers are more likely to be focused and committed if they are single. For all these reasons raw youths, particularly younger brothers, and widowers who were still in the prime of life, not destitute but hoping to improve their economic circumstances, were probably selected or conscripted in greatest numbers.

We almost never hear of women accompanying settlers abroad, and, even if this was occasionally the practice, they would have been few in number, given the fact that the success of the enterprise was dependent upon able-bodied men. Women represented an encumbrance, added to which their chances of survival would have been much lower than that of men. Of 27,000 emigrants from France to Canada between 1608 and 1763 only 1,767 were women, and a comparable imbalance between the sexes may have existed in antiquity (Poussou 1994, 27; cited in Horden and Purcell 2000, 385). One exception to the rule is priestesses, who may have been included in the first wave of settlers because female deities were served by women (for example, Str.
Geog
. 4.1.4 C179: cult of Artemis in Massilia). Another is prostitutes. Though female Greek names occur
on gravestones in some cemeteries, it is possible that they belonged to indigenous women who had adopted these names once they married.

Departing

Probably on the eve of departure both those setting sail and those remaining at home took a solemn oath binding one another to the terms of their agreement in perpetuity. The decree relating to the foundation of Cyrene indicates that the entire population attended the ceremony, including “men, women, boys, and girls.” It also alludes to wax images being burnt when the oath was taken, with a curse upon anyone who breaks the oath to the effect that “he shall melt and dissolve like the images, both himself, his descendants, and his property … whereas those who abide by the oath, both those sailing to Libya and those remaining in Thera, will enjoy an abundance of good things, both they and their descendants” (
ML
5.44–51 = Fornara 18).

According to late sources the pioneers were provided with fire from the city's sacred hearth, with which to kindle a fire in the sacred hearth of their new settlement. The purpose of this ritual is thought to have been to symbolize the indissoluble tie that existed between mother-city and settlement, but it may have had other meanings as well, such as to guarantee the continuity of the life force in their new homeland (Graham 1982a, 148–49). Possibly some rite of exclusion revoked the pioneers' ties with their compatriots, though we do not hear of any. Having performed a sacrifice to secure a favorable omen, they embarked on pentecontors, viz warships capable of being rowed by 50 oarsmen that had a capacity of perhaps 80. If, as seems likely, a minimum of 200 settlers had been identified, a flotilla of four ships set sail. Who funded the flotilla goes unrecorded, but it is likely that the oikist was at least partially responsible.

From this moment on the oikist was in complete charge, no longer bound to the authorities in the mother-city and invested with the power of life and death over his companions both during the voyage and in the settlement's foundation period. This is indicated by the word
autokratôr
(one possessing full powers), which is used in the fifth-century decree that lays down the terms for the establishment of the Athenian colony at Brea (
ML
49.8–9 = Fornara 100). Under his leadership, the pioneers had now assumed the status of homeless persons, even in the eyes of their compatriots. They were in effect
xenoi
(foreigners), if not out-and-out
phugades
(exiles). Their condition as outsiders is graphically illustrated by Herodotus's account of the fate of the pioneers who departed from Thera (4.156). Having failed to establish a settlement on the coast of Libya, they decided to return home. When they tried to land on the island, however, their former compatriots pelted them with missiles to prevent them from disembarking. They had no alternative but to set sail for Libya again, knowing this time there was no turning back. Eventually they established a settlement on an island called Platea that lay off the Libyan coast.

Only under extreme conditions did settlers have the right of return. The inscription relating to the settlement of Cyrene states that they will be permitted to reclaim their citizenship and property on Thera only if they are still experiencing “unavoidable hardship” after five years have elapsed following their departure (
ML
5.33–37 = Fornara 18). Since “unavoidable hardship” meant suffering loss of life, it was highly unlikely that many of them would ever have seen their homes again, and had they done so they would no doubt have been treated as much with contempt as with compassion (cf. also
ML
20.6–10 for terms on which pioneers can return to their homeland).

Laying the Foundations

From the moment they finally disembarked on dry land and decided to call it home the settlers had numerous tasks to fulfill. In many cases they would have been taking possession of virgin land. So they would have had to fell trees, prepare the ground, and sow the grain. Their first task was to construct palisade defenses to make sure that their settlement was secure against attack. They also had to establish it on
a religious footing. This meant erecting a temporary wooden altar to Apollo
Archêgetês
(Founder-Leader), who, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, had overall responsibility for the success of their venture. It was the oikist's responsibility to provide the settlement with a name (Thuc. 4.102.3). He also had to lay out precincts for the gods and designate a place to bury the dead. Early on, too, he had to identify land for cultivation, probably allocating it through a process of allotment (Hom.
Od
. 6.6–10). The likelihood of factious disagreement breaking out at this juncture must have been considerable, particularly since the allotments could hardly have been identical in quality, even if they were identical in size. From the middle of the fifth century it was customary to lay out the streets according to a regular grid plan, as was the case at Thurii (D.S. 12.10.7). Some seventy
poleis
in all were divided up in this way (see Hansen and Nielsen 2004, 1367).

The oikist was assisted in his undertakings by a
mantis
(professional seer), who was credited with having divined the precise location of the settlement and who conducted rites consecrating it to the gods. Over the course of time the
mantis
also had to help draw up
nomima
(regulations, customs, traditions) that would form the basis for the settlement's social, political, and legal institutions. This included the division of the citizen body into tribes, the appointment of magistrates, the introduction of a lawcode, the establishment of a pantheon, the arrangement of the festival calendar, and much more besides. Overall
nomima
constituted “a powerful assimilative force when settlers of varied origins would join a nucleus of founders and coopt their identity by being absorbed in the social order” (Malkin 2012, 189–97).

It would no doubt have taken many years, perhaps as much as a generation, before a settlement was fully up and running. It is unclear how long the oikist would have retained the status and powers of an
autokratôr
or by what process those powers would have been handed over to a properly constituted government. Once the
apoikia
had been established on a secure footing, however, its inhabitants would typically dispatch a pentecontor back to the mother-city to report on its progress and invite additional settlers to join them (Schaefer 1960, 87).

Experiencing Nostalgia

The burden of leaving one's homeland was both physical and psychological, involving as it did separation from parents, siblings, grandparents, and friends, and in some cases from wives and children as well. The image of Odysseus “longing for his wife and his homecoming” at the beginning of the
Odyssey
no doubt captures perfectly the emotional state of many Greek settlers, since very few of them could expect to set eyes on their relatives again (1.13). In
Aeneid
book 3 Priam's son Helenus has reproduced Troy in miniature, with all the features of the former city (ll. 349–51). Being reminded constantly of his former life, he is wedded to the past, incapable of embracing the present—unlike Aeneas, who looks forward, no matter how dimly, to what lies ahead. Though some mother-cities—most notably, Corinth, Miletus, Syracuse, and Sinope—retained close political links with their offshoots, sometimes keeping them in a state of dependence, there is no evidence that any of them sought to facilitate emotional ties. How could they, given the constraints of communication in the ancient world? Besides which, it would have been highly counterproductive. The new settlement had to assert its own independent identity and validity from the start or else it would calamitously fail.

Leaving the Greek-inhabited world would have been like leaving planet earth. Even though in many cases there would have been presettlement trading contacts between the local people and the mother-city, there was no knowing what alien forms of life existed out there nor whether the group would survive its many ordeals. To comprehend the mindset required, we have only to reflect upon Homer's portrait of Odysseus, regardless of the fact that Odysseus is seeking to return to his homeland rather than establish a new homeland elsewhere. He exhibits exactly the kind of craft, guile, and instinct for survival that would put him head and shoulders above his fellow-competitors in any reality TV show. They are, moreover, precisely the qualities that have distinguished anyone who sets out for an unknown destination in any period of history. His encounters with bizarre peoples evoke both the worst-case and
best-case scenarios of what lay beyond the edge of the Greek-inhabited world. It is no surprise that the
Odyssey
was composed at a time when the expanding and hard-pressed population was seeking a new homeland in Sicily and southern Italy—the region where Odysseus's fanciful adventures are likely to be situated.

Relations between Settlers and indigenous Populations

Our focus up to now has been on those bands of plucky Greeks who demonstrated such courage and enterprise in sailing out into the unknown. But that is only half the story of any diaspora. We should not ignore those who were on the receiving end of their courage and enterprise. The subject is one that is fraught with complication. As Tsetskhladze (1998, 44) has said of the Black Sea region, “Not many things are clear in the study of Greco-native relations,” and the same can be said of Greek-native relations in general. What is axiomatic, however, is that in many cases the settlers would have had to displace the local population, and that to achieve this they resorted to violence.

There are no accounts seen through the eyes of non-Greeks and only brief references to non-Greeks in Greek sources. Thucydides tells us that the Sicels, the native inhabitants of Sicily, were repeatedly driven out of their territory, first by the Corinthians who settled in Syracuse, then by the Chalcidians who settled in Leontini, and later by other Chalcidians who settled in Catania (6.3.2–3; cf. D.S. 11.76.3). Archaeology confirms Thucydides' testimony at least in the case of Syracuse, where the neighboring Sicel site at Pantalica was abandoned shortly after the original Corinthian foundation was established (Vallet 1968, 110f.). It remains unclear, however, whether relations between Sicels and Greeks were antagonistic from the start or whether they became so only when the Greeks began to multiply and represented a threat to Sicel survival. There was a tradition that Androclus, a legendary king of Athens and one of the leaders of the Ionian migration, expelled the non-Greek inhabitants of Ephesus before establishing it as a Greek settlement (Str.
Geog
. 14.1.21 C640). There is also evidence that the indigenous population that occupied the territory around Sybaris and Taras in southern Italy fled as a result of Greek migration.