Typically the oikistes was revered by future generations and
received heroic honors (that is, he attained a semidivine sta-
tus and was the object of civic worship).
City foundation was steeped in ritual. Th ere was fi rst of
all the necessity of consulting the oracle of Apollo at Delphi,
which might give advice on the proper location for the city
(though many of the oracles that have come down to us in the
literary sources are forgeries). Delphi was also charged with
settling disputes that might have arisen, including deciding
who the oikistes should be. In many cases Apollo himself was
considered an oikistes and was worshipped in the Sicilian col-
ony of Naxos under the cult title Archegetes (city founder).
According to Th ucydides, this shrine was much revered by
colonists of all cities. Th ere is perhaps a sense in which the
colonization movement, by bringing the citizens of various
Greek-speaking cities into proximity with other cultures
(who were, not surprisingly, oft en hostile to new settlers),
helped establish a sense of common Greek identity. In addi-
tion, the age of colonization coincides with the development
of the polis, and the foundation of colonies may be seen as a
series of experiments in how to govern a state.
A colony was expected to maintain close relations with
its metropolis (literally, “mother city”), symbolized in the
fi rst instance by the sending of the sacred hearth fi re from the
metropolis along on the founding expedition. Th e foundation
document of Cyrene specifi es the oaths to be sworn by both
sides, which oblige the settlers not to return home (this col-
ony was founded because of population pressures) and which
commit the metropolis, Th íra, to come to the aid of its colony.
Such obligations could be of extremely long duration: Th ucy-
dides shows the city of Epidamnus in 431 b.c.e. appealing for
help to its metropolis of Corcyra; when rebuff ed, they carried
the appeal to Corinth, which had founded Corcyra 300 years
earlier. Th ucydides lists a number of instances where colonies
fought against their metropoleis. His point is that such in-
stances were rare and noteworthy. Syracuse thus found itself
opposed to Athens in the Peloponnesian War because of its
ancestral tie to Corinth, despite the fact that it shared with
Athens a democratic constitution. Th e colonial relation out-
weighed political ideology.
Th e motives for individuals to join colonial expeditions
must have varied greatly. In addition to the obvious fi nan-
cial and personal motives (grants of land, adventure, and the
chance for a fresh start), in some cases political strife at home
provided an impetus. Colonies could be a place of refuge for
those with political (or legal) diffi culties, and in some cases
daughter cities took in subsequent waves of exiles from their
metropoleis. (Modern parallels would include the coloniza-
tion of Australia and much of the eastern United States.) In
Xenophon’s Anabasis a group of Greek mercenaries, aban-
doned far from home by the death of their patron, seriously
consider founding a colony (as did the Athenian army when
stranded in Sicily, in Th ucydides’ account). Th is shows that
founding a city could be born of desperation and also raises
indirectly the question of gender. Presumably, city founda-
tions included both men and women but perhaps not in equal
numbers, given the rigors of founding a city in hostile ter-
ritory and the Greeks’ views that most such activities were
better done by men. In this case intermarriage with native
peoples may have been common, yet the Greek sources are
silent on this issue.
Th e narratives Greek cities developed about their own
colonial enterprises are worth looking at. Th ere is a strong
tendency to portray the foundation of a colony in what we
would think of as mythic terms. (For the Greeks myth and
history were not always separate categories.) Th e impulse to
found the city is expressed in terms of crisis, oft en of a per-
sonal nature: strife between brothers, exile as a result of a
crime, the physical deformity of the future oikistes. Even an
impersonal force such as population pressure can be person-
alized: Th íra’s foundation of Cyrene (in a version reported by
Herodotus) is sa id to be t he resu lt of a droug ht sent by Apol lo
when the Th erans ignored his fi rst command to found a
colony. Th e consultation at Delphi involves not merely ap-
proval for the colony but the granting of a sign (particu-
larly a command to follow an animal guide to the site of the
new city), and in some cases a riddle to be fi gured out by
the oikistes (correctly interpreting, for example, “an attack
of the earthborn” to refer to an infestation of mice). Further,
colonization can be viewed through the metaphorical lens of
marriage: Colonists establish a new city as a married couple
establishes a new household. It has been suggested that the
metaphor expresses the Greeks’ ambivalence about their re-
lations with native peoples. Rather than being expelled, they
and their land welcome the newcomers, perhaps with rights
of intermarriage.
Whatever its origins, colonization in the Archaic Age had
a tremendous impact on Greek civilization, particularly in
regard to the settlements in the west. Sicily and Magna Grae-
cia were the Greek version of the New World. Th e abundance
of fertile land created prosperity, refl ected in the region’s still
magnifi cent architecture and other material remains, and
the region served as a constant source of cultural innovation,
giving birth to such important fi gures as Parmenides, Em-
pedocles, and Archimedes.THE SECOND PHASE OF COLONIZATION
Colonization in the sixth and fi ft h centuries b.c.e. tended to
become more overtly imperial and designed to promote the
overseas interests of the metropolis; this was especially true
with the rise of the Athenian empire in the years aft er the Per-
sian Wars. Corinth was a pioneer in this regard even in the
late seventh century b.c.e.: Th ere it became common practice
to choose as oikistai the sons of the city’s tyrant (sole ruler
of a polis, who diff ered from a king chiefl y in the lack of a
hereditary claim to power), establishing an overseas dynastic
link. Similarly, the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus sent family
members to be in charge of colonies at Sigeum and Lemnos.
In the fi ft h century b.c.e., aft er the tyrannies had died out,
it was necessary to secure the interests of the metropolis bymigration and population movements: Greece 713