Wandering Greeks Read Online Free

were thought to have occurred around this time. He concludes (1.12.4):
    It was only long after the war had ended that Greece finally became stable, no longer prone to upheavals and able to send out apoikiai [settlements] abroad.
    Though Thucydides does not draw any analogy between the migratory movements that were occasioned by the Trojan War and the frequent unsettlements that were brought about by the Peloponnesian War, it is evident that he had this latter event in mind when he cast his imagination back to the past.
    Stasis (political strife), as we shall see, was a routine feature of life in the Greek city-state, and it commonly resulted in the expulsion of one or other faction, either oligarchic or democratic, or, less commonly, one or other ethnic group. It was in fact one of the principal causes of mass displacement, just as it is in the modern world. Other stimuli in the modern world include demographic growth, religious conflict, environmental disaster, war, famine, and the desire for economic advantage. In ancient Greece a similar set of determinants operated, absent religious conflict, which for the most part counted for little.
    The best we can do in seeking to determine the cause of population movement in the Greek world is to make some crude generalizations. Though demographic growth, famine, and an eagerness to establish markets for the sale and purchase of goods are likely to have prompted a polis to dispatch a group of pioneers to found a settlement, we are hardly everin a position to prioritize these (and other) factors. We know, too, that some settlements were founded by groups that were politically disaffected. The expansion of the Greek world consequent upon the conquests of Alexander the Great in the last decades of the fourth century, which resulted in mercenary soldiers settling as far east as the Hindu Kush and beyond, was fueled in part by demographic growth. Armed conflict was as much a source of dislocation then as it is now, especially when the Greek world was in turmoil, as during both the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. Human trafficking was extremely prevalent as a result of both piracy and warfare. Those most at risk were women, children, and young adults. Large numbers of people were displaced to serve the military and political ambitions of tyrants and states. Dionysius I, for instance, ruler of Syracuse (405–367), forced tens of thousands to relocate to his capital, not only to provide a counterweight to Carthage’s increasing domination of the western part of Sicily, but also to strengthen his hold over that city. In somewhat similar fashion the city of Megalopolis was established in 368 to reduce Sparta’s military domination of the Peloponnese. Environmental disasters probably caused displacement, too, though the evidence is inconclusive.
    As for individuals, aeiphugia (permanent exile) was a common punishment for those convicted of homicide and treason, since long-term imprisonment was not an option in the Greek world. We already hear of itinerants in the Odyssey , and they became numerous in the fifth and fourth centuries. The majority of metics who resided in Athens were probably motivated to leave their homes to improve their economic circumstances. At least some, however, must have been compelled by exigency. The topographical diversity of the Mediterranean landscape made it essential for the population of each micro-region to be highly mobile in order to capitalize on the full range of environmental opportunities (Horden and Purcell 2000, 385). An unknown number would have been either transhumance pastoralists, viz those who follow a fixed pattern of movement, or semi-nomadic, viz those who do not adhere to any fixed pattern. An example of a transhumance pastoralist is the herdsman in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus , who spends his time “on Mount Cithaeron and places nearby” (l. 1127). A related phenomenonis that of internal migration, as for instance in the