Greek colonisation
Hundreds of new cities are planted from Spain to the Black Sea.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 200 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
Between roughly 750 and 550 BCE Greek cities send out organised expeditions that found independent daughter cities around the Mediterranean and Black Sea — Syracuse, Naples, Marseille, Byzantium, Cyrene. Land hunger, political conflict and trade all drive it. The colonies are politically independent of their founders but keep cultic ties, which spreads Greek language, coinage and civic institutions across an enormous area without any empire behind it.