Mediterranean Historical Review Vol. 27, No. 1, June 2012, 73–85 Greek colonization: small and large islands Mario Lombardo Dipartimento di Beni Culturali, Universita` degli Studi del Salento, Lecce, Italy This article looks at the relation between insular identity and colonization, in Greek thought but also in Greek colonial practices; more precisely, it examines how islands of different sizes are perceived and presented in their role of ‘colonizing entities’, and as destinations of colonial undertakings. Size appears to play an important role: there seems to have been a tendency to settle small to medium sized islands with a single colony. Large islands too, such as Corsica and Sardinia, follow the pattern ‘one island – one polis’; the case of Sicily is very different, but even there, in a situation of crisis, a colonial island identity emerged. Similarly, a number of small to medium-sized single- polis islands of the Aegean acted as colonizing entities, although there is almost no mention of colonial undertakings by small and medium-sized Aegean islands that had more than one polis. Multi-polis islands, such as Rhodes or Crete – but not Euboea – are often presented as the ‘collective’ undertakers of significant colonial enterprises. Keywords: islands; insularity; identity; Greek colonization; Rhodes; Crete; Lesbos; Euboea; Sardinia; Corsica; Sicily 1. Islands are ubiquitous in the Mediterranean ecosystem, and particularly in the Aegean landscape; several important books have recently emphasized the important and manifold role played by insular locations in Antiquity.1 As ubiquitous presences in the Mediterranean scenery, islands also feature in the ancient Greek traditions concerning ‘colonial’ undertakings and practices. (Despite its anachronistic overtones, I shall use the traditional vocabulary of colonization, for lack of a ready alternative.2) The aim of this article is to examine the ways in which islands of different sizes are perceived and presented both in their role of ‘colonizing entities’, and as loci of ‘colonial foundations’ or, to put it differently, as the destinations of colonial undertakings. Because I am concerned here with forms of perception and representation of the ‘colonial’ Greek experience within the ancient Greek traditions, I am not going to address the complex issue of the historical reliability of the Greek foundation stories, with their apoikistic language and ‘models’, in reference to Greek experiences of overseas mobility and settlement in archaic age.3 The earliest horizons of the ancient Greek tradition already highlight the existence of a special relationship between insularity and Greek colonial experiences: it is sufficient here to refer to the well-known Homeric passage on the colonization of Rhodes by Tlepolemus, or to the description of the goats’ island near the land of the Cyclopes as a ‘wooded island, on which there are countless wild goats, for the coming and going of men does not drive them away, nor do hunters enter it’, an island rich in water and in pasturable and arable land, and moreover possessing a good harbour – an island thus well suited for a Greek colonial settlement, as the poet himself seems explicitly to suggest.4 The foundation of the *Email: [email protected] ISSN 0951-8967 print/ISSN 1743-940X online q 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2012.669150 http://www.tandfonline.com 74 M. Lombardo Phaeacian city in Scheria by Nausithoos – or, if we follow Demand, the relocation of the Phaeacian community to Scheria – also offers a good example, even though Homer never qualifies Scheria as an island.5 Not coincidentally, these three Homeric passages feature prominently in the recent debate about early Greek ‘colonization’.6 The accent put on the strong relation between islands and ‘colonization’ is not a feature limited to the Homeric poems: abundant evidence from later periods likewise points to islands – small or large, close to the mainland or far from it – as destinations of colonial undertakings, and more specifically as locations of apoikı´ai. Islands, moreover, frequently figure as the starting contexts of such undertakings. It is sufficient here to refer to the well- known passage in Thucydides that presents Minos as ‘the earliest of all those known to us by tradition who acquired a navy; he made himself master of a very great part of what is now called the Hellenic sea, and became lord ( rj1) of the Cyclades islands and first colonizer (o kisth` 6 prv˜ to6) of most of them’: Minos moves from an island base, Crete, and, having acquired an important navy, extends his control over the other islands.7 In what follows, I shall first rapidly review the general features that characterize the nexus of insularity and colonization in our literary sources; I shall then develop two specific case studies. The first concerns the four largest islands of the Aegean, and the different ways in which they are perceived and presented as colonizing entities. The second looks at the three largest islands of the central Mediterranean, and examines the different ways in which they feature as destinations of colonial undertakings or as locations of colonial foundations. On the basis of these case studies, and taking as our point of departure the illuminating work on islands and insularity produced by Christy Costantakopoulou and other scholars,8 I hope to be able to shed new light on the relation between insularity, or, rather, insular identity and colonization, in Greek thought but also in Greek colonial practices. 2. I shall begin by looking at islands as the end-point of colonial undertakings, and more specifically by looking at the very small offshore islands, ubiquitous in the Mediterranean landscape, to which Greek tradition sometimes attributes a meaningful role as offshore trading posts settled by Phoenicians and also by Greeks.9 Piero Guzzo has recently addressed this topic in a paper in which he reviews the literary evidence about the numerous ancient toponyms, mostly referring to islands, which exhibit the Greek (and perhaps Anatolian) suffix -oussa, and which in the past have been variously connected with early Greek colonization or with pre-colonial trade.10 It is worth highlighting here that, when these toponyms refer to islands, they feature either as the ancient names of well-known polis-islands, such as Anthemoussa for Samos and Pityoussa for Chios, or as the names of mostly small and offshore islands (but also of at least one big island, Ichnoussa for Sardinia), which never became colonial poleis.11 Thus, it seems that these toponyms refer to a horizon of Greek experiences of mobility and settlement earlier than that which saw the ‘crystallization’ of the polis in the eighth century BCE and the foundation of most colonial poleis. It is not by chance that there is only a single exception, that of Pithekoussai, the medium-sized island in the Bay of Naples that saw the oldest, and in many aspects atypical, Greek colonial foundation in the western Mediterranean around 770 BCE.12 Another point that emerges clearly from both the literary sources and the archaeological evidence is the role played by small offshore islands as bridge-heads for later colonial settlements. The most famous case is probably that of the little island of Ortygia, the seat of the first Corinthian settlers in Syracuse, which would later lose its insular status to become the inner city of the great colonial polis.13 Another instance is the offshore islet of San Martı` d’Empuries, which, according to Strabo – and to the results of Mediterranean Historical Review 75 archaeological investigations – was for a long period the seat of a Phocaean or Massaliote trading post, before becoming the ‘Old City’ of the larger mainland settlement of Emporion.14 At the other extremity of the Mediterranean, the little island of Berezan on the northern shore of the Black Sea formed the bridge-head for the later foundation of the Milesian colony of Borysthenes-Olbia.15 And, in a sense, Pithekoussai too could be seen as a sort of bridge-head for the joint foundation by the Chalcidians and the Cymaeans, some years later, of the colony of Cumae on the nearest part of the opposite mainland coast. This same Pithekoussai is otherwise typical of a number of colonies, and of colonial poleis, each occupying a small to medium-sized island, located more or less near to the mainland or to the coast of a large island, like Sicily. Instances are numerous: they comprise the Corinthian colonies of Kerkyra and Leucas in Ionian Sea, opposite to the coasts of Epirus and Acarnania respectively; Parian Thasos and Samian Samothrake in the northern Aegean; Milesian Prokonnesos in the Propontis, and Cnidian Lipara in the Tyrrhenian Sea, not far from the Sicilian and south Italian coasts. These are all cases of single-polis islands, that is of colonial settlements that gave rise to poleis occupying an entire island each; in other words, these colonial settlements managed to establish themselves in such a way that the political boundaries coincided with the geographical, natural boundaries. The story of the foundation of Corinthian Kerkyra, as narrated by Plutarch, is particularly interesting in this respect, because we are told that the Corinthian colonists proceeded to expel the Eretrian settlers who had previously colonized the island.16 This seems to imply that it was considered inappropriate, or even unfeasible, to establish a colony on a small to medium-sized island where another group of colonists were already present,