The Western Colonies

Kyme, the famous Greek outpost in Campania, stood apart from the later Euboic colonies in more ways than one. She was founded from Pithekoussai about the middle of the eighth century (i.e. some twenty years before Naxos, the earliest of the others), and the motives for her foundation appear to have been more ambitious than those of the rest. The steady flow of the Euboic and Achaian emigrants into Sicily and southern Italy from c. 734 onwards was directed principally towards good land on which to settle and raise crops, whereas Kyme’s isolated position north of all the rest reveals what was probably the main motive of the pioneers who founded her-trade with the wealthy interior. Moreover Pithekoussai and Kyme were the only Euboic colonies in the west in which both Eretrians and Chalkidians took part.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Emigration · Ethnology · Foundation (evidence) · Genealogy · Geography · Rest (music) · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · History