Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The reasons for the Greeks to establish colonies were strong economic growth with the consequent overpopulation of the motherland, [1] and that the land of these Greek city states could not support a large city. The areas that the Greeks would try to colonise were hospitable and fertile.
Another area with significant Greek colonies was the coast of ancient Illyria on the Adriatic Sea (e.g. Aspalathos, modern Split, Croatia). Cicero remarks on the extensive Greek colonization, noting that "Indeed it seems as if the lands of the barbarians had been bordered round with a Greek sea-coast."
This was not simply for trade, but also to found settlements. These Greek colonies were not, as Roman colonies were, dependent on their mother-city, but were independent city-states in their own right. [43] Greeks settled outside of Greece in two distinct ways. The first was in permanent settlements founded by Greeks, which formed as ...
Aeniania (Greek: Αἰνιανία) or Ainis (Greek: Αἰνίς) was a small district to the south of Thessaly (which it was sometimes considered part of). [2] The regions of Aeniania and Oetaea were closely linked, both occupying the valley of the Spercheios river, with Aeniania occupying the lower ground to the north, and Oetaea the higher ground south of the river.
The ancient Greeks first used the word thalassocracy to describe the government of the Minoan civilization, whose power depended on its navy. [6] Herodotus distinguished sea-power from land-power and spoke of the need to counter the Phoenician thalassocracy by developing a Greek "empire of the sea".
In 499 BC the Greeks rose in the Ionian Revolt, and Athens and some other Greek cities went to their aid. In 490 BC, the Persian Great King, Darius I, having suppressed the Ionian cities, sent a fleet to punish the Greeks. The Persians landed in Attica, but were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by a Greek army led by the Athenian general ...
Ancient Greek colonies. Another reason was the strong economic growth with the consequent overpopulation of the motherland. [5] The terrain that some of these Greek city-states were in could not support a large city. Politics was also the reason as refugees from Greek city-states tended to settle away from these cities in the colonies. [24]
The first Greek colonies were founded in eastern Sicily in the 8th century BC when the Chalcidian Greeks founded Zancle, Naxos, Leontinoi and Katane; in the south-east corner the Corinthians founded Syracuse and the Megareans Megara Hyblaea, while on the western coast the Cretans and Rhodians founded Gela in 689 BC, with which the first Greek colonisation of Sicily ended.