facilitated contact with foreign partners through gift-giving. This long-
distance trade would not just focus on securing imports in the form of luxury
goods and metals but also on exports, including products manufactured
expressly to sell abroad to make a profit.
The initial direction of the new long-distance trade was eastward with old
trading partners in the Levant. By 800BCEGreeks from the island of Euboea
were established at Al Mina (“the Port”) in northern Syria just up the coast
from ancient Ugarit. Al Mina would be used by Greek merchants from var-
ious cities for the next four centuries as an emporium for the transfer of
goods between the interior of Southwest Asia, the Aegean region, and later
the western Mediterranean. Probably the Greeks were seeking metals carried
down from Anatolia and Armenia, but later, after they found better sources
in the western Mediterranean, they reversed theflow and carried metals,
especially iron, into Al Mina. Other goods the Greeks sought from the east
included such high-tech products as glass, medicines, and dyes.
The Euboeans also pioneered Greek trade to the west. The common
assumption has been that Greek colonization was primarily a matter of
overpopulation and land hunger, with surplus people spilling out of Greece
tofind new places to farm. Whereas this was true in some instances, a closer
look at the earliest Greek settlements in the west seems to show most were
established as part of a trade-route building process for contact with peoples
such as the Etruscans, who lived on the Italian peninsula north of Rome.
Even colonies established for agricultural purposes were soon producing sur-
pluses of grain and other products in demand by the folks back home. The
earliest of the Euboean colonies in the west was at Pithekoussai (“Ape
Island”) on the northern rim of the Bay of Naples, a strategic location for
contact with the Etruscans but hardly an attractive place to farm. Soon goods
were moving from Pithekoussai not just to Greece but as far as Al Mina with
stops along the way.
The Euboean Greeks and the Phoenicians were often partners in trade, and
part of the population at Pithekoussai was Phoenician. Since the Phoenicians
preceded the Greeks in this part of the world, it is unlikely that the Greeks
could have entered this market without Phoenician acquiescence. For a time,
until the founding of Massilia (Marseilles) inc. 600BCE, the Greeks did not
attempt to penetrate farther west into territory that fell under the Phoenician
monopoly. In some places Greeks also lived side by side and formed business
partnerships with Etruscans. The Greeks did safeguard the entryway into
their own area of operation by taking control over the Straits of Messina, the
narrow passage separating Italy and Sicily, and various Greek cities set up
colonies on both sides, usually where trade prospects looked promising. Soon
colonies were founding their own colonies.
The era of peace and partnership, however, did not last indefinitely. By the early
sixth centuryBCE, chronic warfare existed between Greek and Phoenician
colonies in Sicily over control of the doorway between the eastern and western
68 Of purple men and oil merchants