

Some Greeks became quite wealthy trading things like Etruscan metals and Black Sea grain.Ĭategories with related articles in this website: Ancient Greek History (48 articles) Īncient Greek Art and Culture (21 articles) Īncient Greek Life, Government and Infrastructure (29 articles) Īncient Greek and Roman Religion and Myths (35 articles) Īncient Greek and Roman Philosophy and Science (33articles) Īncient Persian, Arabian, Phoenician and Near East Cultures (26 articles) "They wanted to know what lay on the other side of the sea." They also expanded abroad to get rich and ease tensions at home where rival city-states fought with one another over land and resources. Real curiosity," a British historian told National Geographic. Why did the Greeks head west? "They were driven in part by curiosity.
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The most intensive colonization took place in Italy although outposts were set up as far west as France and Spain and as far east as the Black Sea, where the established cities as Socrates noted like "frogs around a pond." On the European mainland, Greek warriors encountered the Gauls who the Greeks said "knew how to die, barbarians though they were." ĭuring this period in history the Mediterranean Sea was frontier as challenging to the Greeks as the Atlantic was to 15th century European explorers like Columbus.

Beginning in the 8th century B.C., the Greeks set up colonies in Sicily and southern Italy that endured for 500 years, and, many historians argue, provided the spark that ignited Greek golden age. They needed to colonize the Mediterranean to get resources.

Greece was resource poor and overpopulated. In this way Greek culture was spread to a fairly wide area. The Greeks traded all over the Mediterranean with metal coinage (introduced by the Lydians in Asia Minor before 700 B.C.) colonies were founded around the Mediterranean and Black Sea shores (Cumae in Italy 760 B.C., Massalia in France 600 B.C.) Metropleis (mother cities) founded colonies abroad to provide food and resources for their rising populations.
