other means. Th ere exists a foundation decree for an Athe-
nian colony at Brea, dateable to about 445 b.c.e., which speci-
fi es that “the cities” (that is, Athens’s imperial subjects and
allies) are obligated to come to the defense of Brea. Further,
the oikistes has limited powers: It is the city of Athens that
determines the details of the expedition and appoints offi cials
to divide the land. Th e oikistes in this instance seems to have
been an offi cial who later returned to Athens; this is certainly
the case for the later foundations of Th urii and Amphipolis.
Th e strategic importance of Amphipolis (in the region near
Th race) was great, and aft er the city was lost to the Spartans
in the Peloponnesian War the city changed its oikistes, honor-
ing as its founder the Spartan general Brasidas, who had died
in capturing it. Th e Spartans also sent out colonies for impe-
rial purposes, being the dominant participants in the mixed
settlement at Heraclea, a strategic location near Euboea.
Athens developed a new type of colony in the fi ft h cen-
tury b.c.e.: the cleruchy, a settlement, typically on land seized
from a rival state, in which the settlers maintained their Athe-
nian citizenship. (In this respect, the cleruchy comes closer to
modern systems of colonialism than does the standard Greek
model.) Th e cleruchs (in Greek, “allotment holder”), drawn
primarily from the poorer classes, received an allotment of
land (kleros in Greek) and had the normal citizen obligations
regarding military service and taxes. It seems likely that most
cleruchs lived in their appointed cities rather than staying in
Athens and receiving income from their kleroi. Cleruchies
oft en were established when the native population had been
expelled: this is the case for Greek lands such as Melos and
Aigina and also for lands with non-Greek populations such
as Lemnos and Scyros. In other cases a cleruchy could be
established on top of a native population. While some cle-
ruchies seem to have served as military outposts, most of
them served Athenian military interests less directly, by ef-
fectively expanding the Athenian empire. Th e cleruchies of
the fi ft h century b.c.e. were all lost aft er Athens’ defeat in the
Peloponnesian War in 404 b.c.e., but several others were es-
tablished in the fourth century b.c.e. and at the beginning of
the Hellenistic Age. Ironically, Athens’s fi rst cleruchy was in
Chalcis, which had been one of the pioneers of the coloniza-
tion movement during its heyday 200 years earlier.
COLONIZATION IN THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
Th e fi nal wave of Greek colonization came as a result of the
conquests of Alexander the Great. Unlike the Archaic coloni-
zations, which were haphazard and the product of many in-
dividual decisions in rival cities, the settlements established
by Alexander were centrally planned, the product of a single
individual’s will. Moreover, they were established with a spe-
cifi c goal in mind: to spread Greek civilization throughout
the vast realm he had conquered. Evaluation of Alexander’s
colonization program is hampered, however, by the biases of
the sources. He was revered as a hero by many later Greeks,
who tended to exaggerate his accomplishments. Th e Greek
biographer Plutarch, for example, claims that colonization
was Alexander’s highest achievement and credits him with
establishing 70 cities. Th is is presumably an exaggeration,
though there are some 20 known foundations (many named
Alexandria, modesty not being a common trait among con-
querors). It seems that many of these were originally set up
as military garrisons; others were renamed or resettled with
new populations.
Aft er the death of Alexander, the Seleucids (who inher-
ited the eastern part of his kingdom) maintained his policy of
colonization, with many settlements relatively close to home
(in Syria and Asia Minor) but with some in central Asia as
far as what is now northern Afghanistan. Th e Seleucids took
over many administrative practices from the Persian Em-
pire, but the cities they settled were indisputably Greek, with
Greek-style temples, houses, and public spaces. Inscriptional
evidence shows that even the more remote locations stayed in
regular contact with Greeks in the Mediterranean. It seems
that local peoples kept their traditions as well: Examples from
Babylon and Caria show a process of Hellenization, which was
m o r e a m a t t e r o f c u l t u r a l f u s i o n t h a n o f i m p e r i a l i s m. N o w h e r e
is this more evident than in Alexandria in Egypt, the most
successful of Alexander’s foundations. It became, thanks to
institutions like the library (which aimed to have a collection
of every book written in Greek), a cultural center for all of
Greece, which until Alexander had been culturally as well as
politically disunited. But it also welcomed other peoples and
their traditions, Egyptians, Jews, and Romans in particular,
and was the most complex and interesting city in the ancient
world. Alexander’s policy of Hellenization, though founded
in brutal conquest, succeeded on a cultural level long aft er
his empire fell apart: Th e eastern half of the Roman Empire,
including Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, remained Greek in
language and outlook for another millennium or more.OTHER POPULATION MOVEMENTS
Th e warfare endemic to the Greek world led to population
shift s not related to colonization. Th ere were resettlements of
populations displaced by war: the Ionians in the early years
of the fi ft h century b.c.e., aft er their failed revolt against the
Persian Empire, and the Aiginetans in 431 b.c.e. aft er their
defeat by Athens. In these cases the refugees presumably
settled in cities in which they had friends or that were sym-
pathetic to their plight. Th e fate of Melos provides a grimmer
example. Defeated by Athens in 416 b.c.e. despite its attempt
to maintain neutrality, its adult male population was killed,
and its women and children sold as slaves. Slavery was a fact
of Greek life, and mass enslavements of prisoners of war was
common.
Large groups of individuals also moved for economic
reasons: Cities such as Athens and Alexandria had many
resident foreigners (called metics in Athens), both Greek and
non- G r e e k. G r oup s of m e rc e n a r i e s , s u c h a s t h e 10 , 0 0 0 s o l d i e r s
whose expedition under Cyrus the Younger (424?–401 b.c.e.)
is described in Xenophon’s Anabasis, also had the potential
to become permanent residents elsewhere; this sort of settle-714 migration and population movements: Greece