The Greeks were a sea-faring people, and they were an adventurous people. Their own land was small, but the islands of the Aegean formed stepping-stones, as it were, to the coast of Asia Minor, and the Aegean world was very familiar to the Greek sailor. Greek galleys were found in most ports, and the Greek trader became a formidable rival of the Phoenician.
As they sailed from island to island and on to the mainland, the Greeks came to realize that some of these places would make suitable homes, and by degrees they began to colonize them; that is to say, parties of settlers went from their mother-cities to found new homes overseas. Pioneers, adventurous explorers, had always gone out first and brought back reports of the new land. A suitable site required a good water supply, and fertile land where corn could be grown, and the vine and the olive cultivated. The settlers needed timber from which they could build their ships, and of course a good harbour was necessary. They also hoped to find friendly natives who would help them in their farm-work and who would in no way oppose them or interfere with their plans. The natives must have looked with eyes of wonder upon the newly arrived Greeks. Most of them had never seen men of this kind before. The only foreign traders they knew were the Phoenicians, and they came only to trade, to exploit the people and to exhaust the resources of the place in order to gain gold. They knew only these "greedy merchant men with countless gauds in black ships."[1] But these newcomers were different. A Greek poet has described this Greek adventure over the sea, and the wonder of those who received the strangers:
A flash of the foam, a flash of the foam,
A wave on the oarblade welling,
And out they passed to the heart of the blue:
A chariot shell that the wild waves drew.
Is it for passion of gold they come,
Or pride to make great their dwelling?[2]
All kinds of considerations took the Greeks over the sea to found new homes for themselves: some of them were discontented with their government and wanted to go where they could establish a new one; owing to the increasing population their home-cities became over crowded which created difficulties in the supply of food, and many thought a new land would give them greater and better opportunities; others found that the trade of the colonies was a source of wealth; and others went just for the love of adventure. Whenever a body of men decided to sail away and found a colony, they first consulted the Oracle at Delphi as to whether they would be successful, and whether Apollo approved of the place they had chosen and would bless their enterprise. They then chose a leader, whose name was always held in honour and handed down as the founder of the colony. On leaving the mother-city, the colonists went in procession to the Town Hall and there they received fire from the sacred hearth, which they took with them, and from which they kindled the fire on their own sacred hearth in their new home.
These colonies were quite independent of the mother-city as far as government was concerned, but the colonists looked back to the home from which their race had sprung with great affection; wherever they went they were still Greeks, they spoke the Greek language and they worshipped the Greek gods.
Colonies were founded not only in the islands of the Aegean, but along the coasts of the Black Sea, which the Greeks called the Euxine. These latter colonies, of which Byzantium (the ancient name for Constantinople) was the greatest, became very important to the Greeks, for they supplied them with grain which grew abundantly on the northern shores, and with iron from the Hittite land in the South-East.
The greatest of all the colonies in the East were the Ionian colonies, those in the eastern part of the Aegean and on the coast of Asia Minor. The Greeks who colonized them were descended from the Ionian tribes who had settled in Greece, and so this whole region became known as Ionia. Herodotus tells us that the "Ionians had the fortune to build their cities in the most favourable position for climate and seasons of any men whom we know." Miletus was the greatest of the Ionian cities, and it developed a very rich civilization some time before the great days of Athens.
Great thinkers came out of Ionia. Thales, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, the philosopher and man of science, studied the heavens, and he foretold an eclipse of the sun in a certain year, which came to pass. The Babylonians before him had made similar studies, but he carried on their work and made greater advances. He questioned in his mind what his discoveries might mean, and for the first time in the world he declared that the movements of the sun and moon and stars were determined by laws, and that the eclipse of the sun was due to certain movements of the heavenly bodies, and had nothing to do with the anger of the Sun-God. This was the first step in the freeing of men's minds from superstition, and though man had a long way to go and many things to learn before he could take the second step, it was Thales of Miletus and other Ionian philosophers in the sixth century B.C. who first set men to thinking about the real meaning of the things they saw about them in the world of nature. What we to-day call science was born in Ionia more than two thousand years ago. Many wise sayings of Thales have been preserved. It was he who said: "God is the most ancient of all things, for He has no birth: the world is the most beautiful of all things, for it is the work of God: ... time is the wisest of all things, for it finds out everything."[3]
Another wise man of science who lived in Miletus was Anaximander. He was one of the earliest mapmakers, and he and Hecataeus, who wrote a Geography as a "text to Anaximander's map," were amongst the first thinkers who developed the science of Geography.
TEMPLE OF POSEIDON AT PAESTUM.
End of 6th Century B.C.
Paestum, the ancient Poseidonia, was a flourishing Greek Colony in Italy. The colony was founded early in the 6th Century B.C. and in ancient times it was famous for its roses. The temple is one of the best preserved Greek temples out of Attica
The Ionian colonies could claim poets as well as men of science. Chios is said to have been the birthplace of Homer, and Lesbos, one of the largest of the island colonies, was famous as the home of Sappho, not only the first woman whose poetry has come down to us, but one of the great poetesses of the world. Unfortunately we have only a few fragments of her poems.
THE GIFTS OF EVENING
Thou, Hesper, bringest homeward all
That radiant dawn sped far and wide,
The sheep to fold, the goat to stall,
The children to their mother's side.[4]
The face of Greece was turned towards the East, but adventurous spirits have always turned towards the unknown West; the Phoenicians had already explored western regions and the Greeks soon followed. The Elysian Fields lay to the west and what might man not discover if he sailed in that direction? The Greeks did not find the Elysian Fields, but they did what proved to be of the most momentous importance in the history of the civilization of the world. They founded colonies in the south of Italy, and these became so flourishing that the whole region was known as Magna Graecia. These Greeks brought their writing, their art, and their poetry and planted them securely in the land that was one day to be ruled by a city, which was then only a little settlement at the foot of seven hills. Rome became mightier than Greece in the art of governing a great empire, and the day was to come when she would rule Greece herself, but in the development of her civilization Rome acknowledged the Greeks as her teachers.
Other Greek colonies were founded at Syracuse in Sicily, and along the north coast of the Mediterranean to what is now Marseilles, and in the south a few were established along the shores of Africa to Naucratis in Egypt. The colonies in the south of Spain and along the north coast of Africa from the Pillars of Hercules to Carthage were in the hands of the Phoenicians, but by the end of the sixth century B.C. the prevailing civilization in the Mediterranean was Greek.
The Ionian colonies occupied the coast land of Asia Minor, but the mainland behind them was the Kingdom of Lydia. For a long time the Ionians lived in peace, developing their science, thinking out their ideas, and growing in power. But at the beginning of the sixth century B.C. a new race of kings came to the Lydian throne. They were vigorous and ambitious, and did not approve of the important coast towns with good harbours being in the hands of Greeks. So they attacked them, beginning with Miletus which was besieged. The siege lasted eleven years, but the city did not surrender. At last the Lydians realized that Miletus was being saved by her harbour, and though it could get no food or supplies of any kind by land, everything needed was brought to the city by water. So the King of Lydia gave up the idea of conquering Miletus, and he made a treaty of peace with her.
It was probably not only the impossibility of conquering a seaport that made the King of Lydia give up the siege of Miletus, but the knowledge that a war cloud had arisen in the east which was steadily drawing nearer his land. This was the army of the Medes, a nation which had already helped to destroy Assyria, and whose army was now coming towards Lydia. Several battles took place with no very decisive result, but at length the two armies met in a battle
in which it happened, when the fight had begun, that suddenly the day became night. And this change of the day Thales the Milesian had foretold to the Ionians. The Lydians, however, and the Medes, when they saw that it had become night instead of day, ceased from their fighting and were much more eager both of them that peace should be made between them.[5]
So peace was made, and soon after the King of Lydia died, and Croesus succeeded him.
Now the Ionian cities, when they saw their independence threatened, ought to have combined together and made a joint stand against their enemies, but each separate city so prized its independence and so feared anything that might even seem to lessen it, that they stood alone, and when Croesus, being at peace with the Medes, determined to get possession of these Ionian cities, he was able to attack them one by one and to overpower them. He allowed them to keep their own independent government, but he required them to pay him a regular yearly tribute. This was the first time in Greek history that Greeks had paid a tribute to anybody; before the reign of Croesus, all Greeks everywhere had been free. Croesus left a certain amount of independence to the Ionian cities, because of his admiration for the Greeks and their civilization. He sent rich and splendid gifts to Apollo, and in return was made a citizen of Delphi, and at the Pythian Games his envoys were given special seats of honour.
By this time Cyrus, the Mede, had become King of Persia, and Croesus watched his increasing power with great anxiety. He saw that war was bound to come, so he sent a message to the Oracle at Delphi asking if he should march against the Persians. What Herodotus called a "deceitful" answer came back, that if he crossed the river Halys a great empire would be destroyed. Thinking, of course, that this meant the destruction of the Persian empire, Croesus crossed the river and met Cyrus in battle. Now the Lydians were famous for their horses, and horsemen were an important part of their army. Cyrus knew this, so he thought of a plan whereby he might defeat them. He ordered all the camels which were in the rear of his army carrying the provisions and baggage, to be unloaded and the camels brought to the front, and there well-armed men were mounted on them. He did this "because the horse has a fear of the camel and cannot endure either to see his form or to scent his smell; and so soon as the horses scented the camels and saw them, they galloped away to the rear, and the hopes of Croesus were at once brought to nought."[6]
The Lydians were defeated and withdrew into Sardis, the capital. But after a short siege Cyrus took the city, and Croesus lost his kingdom. He did not want to fall into the hands of the Persians, so he had a great pyre erected, and after pouring out a libation to the gods, he mounted it and bade his slaves set it on fire that he might perish in the flames, rather than fall alive into the hands of his conqueror. But suddenly clouds arose in the sky and rain fell, extinguishing the flames. It was thought that this must be the doing of Apollo, to whom Croesus had always shown much honour, and hearing of it, Cyrus commanded that he should be taken down from the pyre and brought into his presence. "Croesus," he asked him, "what man was it who persuaded thee to march upon my land and so to become an enemy to me instead of a friend?" And Croesus answered,
O King, that I did this was to your gain and my loss, and the fault lies with the god of the Hellenes who led me to march against you with my army. For no one is so senseless as to choose of his own will war rather than peace, since in peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons. It was the will, I suppose, of the gods that these things should come to pass thus.[7]
Lydia was now added to the Persian Empire and only the Ionian cities were still independent. But even in the face of the great danger from Persia, they did not unite, and one by one Cyrus conquered them until Ionia had been reduced to subjection, and when the cities on the mainland had been conquered, then the Ionians in the islands, being struck with fear by these things, gave themselves to Cyrus, who passing over the upper parts of Asia, subdued every nation, passing over none.[8]
And thus it came about, that the Greeks who lived in Asia lost their independence, and became subject to the Great King of Persia.