The Ancient Greek Colonization Of The Black Sea

The colonization of the Black sea formed an important part in the ancient Greek colonization. The paper indicates the common characters of Greek colonization movements through the case study of the Black Sea.The social problems in the second half of the 7 B.C., especially on the earth crisis, caused by the conflicts between Miletus and Lydians, and forced Miletus turned to colonization in the Black Sea, which opened the prelude of colonization in that area. After 560 B.C., the ranks of colonists had been enlarged by the joins of Magara in mainland Greece and Toes in Asia Minor, while their colonies could not compared with Miletus' because of their limited numbers and the smaller areas.Greek colonies of the Black Sea developed imbalanced. Some of colonies first founded just as trading posts or center cities without politic functions, had been gradually becoming polis along with the economic developments and the increasing populations. Contrarily, some of colonies, founded as apoikia, had gradually fallen into small trading posts because of the depression of economics.After the founding of colonies, colonists generally equally distributed their farming and housing lands. They adopted the similar way of their mother cities to the city plans, religions, calendars and languages. They also widely established the aristocratic or oligarchic governments, while some few colonies put through the democracy practices. The relationship between colonies and their mother cities depended upon the distances between them, the ambitions of the mother cities and their mutual interests. As a whole, they could not separate from each other and apoikia inherited the systems of mother cities from many aspects.The colonists had got diversified relationship with the native people. Some of the colonists lived harmony with native people. But in some colonies, native people were enslaved to the lands by the colonists. Some of native people held profound influences to control the colonies. Though their relationship in the politics were very complicated, their cultures, the barbarous culture in the Black sea and Greek culture, interacted and assimilated with each other and finally formed a new culture community.The emigration of the Black sea had a long period of more than one hundred years, and its full historical documents of this movement not only revealed the common characteristic of Greek colonization, but also inspired us to make further study on this area.