Ancient Greek colonies were called homes away from home, and many outgrew their parents
Between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE, Greek cities sent organised expeditions across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Drought, land hunger, trade and political feuds all drove settlers overseas. They called each new settlement an apoikia, a home away from home, and many became powerful, independent city-states in their own right.
This was not a drifting of tribes, as in the earlier migrations of the Greek Dark Ages. Each venture had a leader, the oikistes, who took settlers out from the mother city, or metropolis. The resulting colonies usually governed themselves while copying their founders' institutions and keeping close cultural ties, which helped spread Greek customs to the peoples around them.
Motives varied. Booming city-states outgrew their territory, and fertile land in the Peloponnese was scarce enough that Thucydides describes early cities raiding one another for good soil. Herodotus tells two stories of how Cyrene in Libya began. The Therans said overpopulation and a long drought on their island led King Grinnus to send Battus to found it; the Cyreneans insisted the oracle of Apollo had chosen Battus. The more practical Theran version may itself have been propaganda to keep ties with a prosperous colony.
Politics exported people too. Strabo records that Taras in southern Italy was founded by the Parthenians, descendants of Spartan women who were refused full citizenship; after a failed plot, sending them abroad defused the conflict at home. Modern researchers add escaping punishment for crimes and plain curiosity to the list of reasons.
Commerce and strategy mattered as much as hunger. Trading posts known as emporia sprang up at key points on sea routes, especially along the rich coasts of southern Italy and Sicily, and could grow into major taxed ports that enriched their founders. Some settlements served as military outposts guarding trade. The appetite for strategic footholds lasted into the Classical era: during the Peloponnesian War Athens tried to seize Syracuse in Sicily, lured, Thucydides says, by exaggerated tales of its wealth, and helped establish Thurii as a colony open to settlers from many Greek cities.
Source: Greek colonisation
