THE COLONIZATION

Already at the second millennium before Christ, the Micenean navigators had already acquired a vast knowledge of the Mediterranean coast thanks to their extraordinary capacity of moving, and of adapting and inserting in new and different social, economical realities and also through their intensive mercantile activities that they had.  It’s just from these relationships and from these exchanges that the Greeks and their indigenous population derive their geographical and ethnographical knowledge of the Italian peninsula which permitted the Greeks of the VIII century before Christ to establish settlement colonies in Sicily and in the southern part of Italy.

Apart from its central position in the inside of the Mediterranean, which made it a natural place 2where to stop for people who sailed from Greece towards west, Calabria represents geo-morphological characteristics which were good places to establish new colonies, especially along the Ionian coasts.  In fact, beyond the curve that forms the gulf of Taranto, there is a great plain land between the rivers Crati and Coscile, whose waters can be easily followed internally to  reach, through the Appennino and through the Sila, opposite the Tyrrhenian Coast. 

Similar is also the passage that opens from the roads of Crotone, even if narrower, the connection internally  can be done following the water-course of the river Neto.

The Ionian Calabrese coast, moreover, can be easily individuated by numerous promontories which characterize it:  Cape Alice, Cape Lacinio (now called Cape Colonna), Cape Stilo and Cape Bruzzano. Each of these constitutes a foundation for the navigation and in relationship  to these many colonies were established even if these were of different typologies or of different types (from the simple place of cult to the simple foundations which last a long time in history).  In the most southern part of Calabria, between Cape Spartivento and Cape Armi, the coast is steep and inhospitable, but projects rapidly towards the Sicilian Strait, fulcrum and meeting point of all the roots along the Mediterranean.

Along the Tyrrhenian Coast of Calabria there is  a great variety of typologies with steep parts and not adapted to frequentation (just think about the Scilla and Poro coasts) that alternate with good dockings and flat hinterlands (like in the case of Gioia Tauro, Lamezia Terme and of the mouth of Lao).  In its northern part it is generally uncomfortable, except for the basin of Paola, Cetraro and Belvedere and the only possibility to reach internally the opposite Coasts are given to the mouth of the Savuto and of Lao.

The natural conditions permit, moreover, a vast diversity of productive activities already known to the first settlers of Micenea; it is necessary anyway to reveal that the characteristics of  colonials  foundation of the Archaic era, were a different phenomenon from the frequentations of the oriental Mediterranean regions and of the western micenean era.

The elements which occurred to the birth of the Greek colonials phenomenon were various and different according to the single establishments. Among these we must give particular importance to the demographical, social economical and political conditions of the home country, characterized by poverty and lack of land in relationship to problems of overpopulation, of concentration of the land in few hands, with the consequent impoverishment of the small landowners and of the need of land which could satisfy the needs of work, the search of products and the possibility to make business or to trade.  The necessity of new lands to use and the possibility of making agricultural and of commercial settlements pushed therefore, thousands of Greek immigrants in the fertile plains of the southern part of Italy, to create a series of prosperous colonies internally and under the gulf of Taranto.  The coast offered as we have seen good approaches and good and sure possibilities of settlements: the same natural conditions  were favourable to the primary productive activity agriculture and also to fishing along the coasts.  With discreet facility they could practice and use the cereal culture, hunting, (or, better yet bird hunting) and also maybe breeding the cattle even if the bull on the money of Sibari and on the various passages of Teocrito according to the Sibariti farmers had been object of interpretation even in various ways among them.  There was without any doubt a great abundance of woods forest from which they could get their wood, had shown even in the case of the polis of Caulonia in which according to Tucidide the Siracusans destroyed great bunches of great piles of wood that were destined to people from Athens.  As far as the vines and the wine is concerned we should remember an exclusive mention by Timeo regarding this as a complicated system of transportation of this drink, produced in the farms of Sibari up until the city.  Such evidence even if they were problematic, constituted an assessment of the production, in the area of a great quantity of wine.  Another great colonial movement had come from the commercial interests part of research of prime materials, in this case its enough to think about the brass case of Temesa, whose fame had left a trace in Omero or to the commerce of tar dealt in the internal mountain of Cauloniatide and of Locride or to the search of silver veins wherever these were available.

It has been revealed that the choice of the place where all the colonies established in the southern part of Italy show a precise interest to own a piece of land which had a need for defence and a facility to cultivate this land in the nucleus colony:  Sibari was situated on an extraordinary fertile and rich land, to the point that l’ecista  di Crotone, was so envious that he planted a settlement in a piece of land with similar geo-morphological  characteristics; the Locri establishment was put in a protective and irrigated basin; only Reggio constitutes an exception and its collocation at the feet of the Aspromonte seems to answer various reasons of security which guarantee the control of the traffic to the strait.

But the choice of these suitable places for the colonial settlements goes to interest a geographical environment that of Calabria which recalls the places where these settlements started from: the Greeks had populated first only the coastal regions where it was possible to practice the same cultures of their homeland then they went more internally into the land to establish connections between one part of Calabria to the other.

The colonies founded were cities in all similar to the cities which were in Greece: the feeling of belonging to the ideal home country were witness of the way they kept their languages, their religions, their cultures and their political institutions.

Politically, thou, the colonies of the Magna Grecia were independent from the city that had promoted the foundation of the colonies, they in fact formed a polis with its own government and did not come in conflict nor did they tend to interfere in the political issues of the home country with the exception of those cases in which there were great common economical interests.  The same independence was shown in the commercial and economical field without taking into consideration the connection between the home country and the colony. The colony in other words lived a situation of absolute autonomy which in many cases permitted a superior economic splendour to that of the home country.

As far as the relationship with the pre-existent indigenous population were concerned, we here could see a unique model but in every place we could see different conditions of contrasts and fights or we could see conditions of agreement acculturation and of exchanges.

The foundation had a great religious character: the city which was responsible for the colonial  expedition arranged first of all the consultation of the oracles , in particular those which were Delfi.  Through the priests God made people know his will as to why the site or the place or the group of citizens should have occupied that place; at which point it would be best for the ships to settle, the selection of the people who should leave, the designation of the founder responsible of the whole deed and the guarantor of  the continuity of civic and religious institutions in the new city.  Under the social profile therefore, the settlers of the first generation, did nothing more then reproduce the institutions and the cults of the original city, transforming their habits, their use, their techniques which were part of their culture background.                   

 The tradition of the foundation of the various colonies in Calabria is usually uncertain even as far as the chronology is concerned. It said that the Calcidesi founded Reggio around the year 730/720; the Achei of Peloponneso probably founded together with groups of various other populations the settlements which were called “ache”, such as Sibari and Crotone.  The most southern colony on the Ionian coast was Locri Epizefiri, founded by the Greeks from Locride.  At the end of the VII and the beginning of the VI century A.C. onward almost all these primary colonies made other sub-colonies , which then formed into urban establishments with the aim of establishing the Greek presence on the territory and to proceed to a delimitation of these cities in a more definite way.  The penetration of Sibari on the Tyrrhenian coast seems to have been very fast:  already near the end of the VII century we say that Sibari founded Poseidonia, on the gulf of Salerno; more recently we also deducted some more colonies even more southern than Sibari, the ones that have to do with Lao and with Scidro, the ones which probably with simple ports of call on the coast transform themselves into real cities following a transfer of many people from Sibari in the year 510 B.C.

The expansion of Locri on the Tyrrhenian sea, dictated on one hand from the scarcity and from the prevailing characteristic mountain of the territory and on the other hand from the rigid structure and the close oligarchy local, brought to the deduction of two sub-colonies, Medma (now called Rosarno) and Ipponio (now called Vibo Valentia) and to the submission of Metauros (Gioia Tauro).  As far as the colony expansion of Crotone is concerned, other than the foundation of Caulonia for which these literary elements diverge a difference it seems that only in the VI century B.C. these had the necessity to rise and to become the Greek centre of Scillezio, on the homonymous gulf; and near the end of the same century or the beginning of the V century, is the founding of the sub-colony of Terina in the territory of  Lametinoi, that Ecateo remembered  in the allocation along the river Lametos and Stefano di Bisanzio as gravitating in the Crotonian ambit.

But often the foundation in the historic era of many of these Greek colonies of Calabria was proceeded from a legendary tradition, by a foundation in the heroic era which the western Greeks, constituted a reason of challenge. In fact, the epic cycle of Nostoi had already approached a series of heroic characters, after the destruction of Ilio on the southern coast of Italy, reconnecting to their original presence to the various communities.  According to the mythical tradition the city of Scillezio was colonized from the Ateniesi di Menesteo, which return from the war Troia; Crotone was probably founded for a promise by Eracle to one of his descendents; Filottete probably founded Petelia and probably died in the region of Crimisa where he had dedicated a sanctuary to Apollo; Caulonia was probably founded by the Amazon Cleta.