Herodotos Histories

The modern historian faces many problems when relying on Herodotos’ Histories as a documentation of colonisation in the Archaic Greek Period. Herodotos’ accounts of the origins of a polis usually have some mythical interpretation; it is this focus on the blending of supernatural and geo-political elements that makes The Histories such a valuable source of anthropological insight. The term colonisation is a dubious one; it calls to mind a population simply moving from place to place, yet the Greeks distinguished between places that were trading posts, emporia, and ‘homes-away-from-home’, apoikiai. The fact that this distinction is not readily apparent in a modern context of colonisation means that we often see historians in the early 20th century

Tyrtaeus recounts the Spartan lineage, “…for you are of the race of unconquered Heracles.” clearly Tyrtaeus says this to emphasise the valour and prestige of the Spartans but also because he himself believes it. The problem with colonisation comes when there are multiple stories regarding the same event. Herodotos on the settling of Cyrene gives us two different accounts, one from the Theraean point of view and one from the Cyrenean point of view. Herodotos says the Theraeans believe that King Grinnus was told by the Pythia to found a city in Libya and when he complains that he is too old to do this, “‘Lord, I am too old and heavy to stir; command one of these younger men to do this’” , the noble-born Battos is to take his place instead. Herodotos uses this account to show that hybris and nemesis are eminent in the Greek world and we see this after Thera suffers horrible drought as a result of their ignoring the oracle. Here, Herodotos is moralising mythic-history as if it were Greek

The Pythia orders Phalanthos to found Taras. In Strabo , Antiochos says that tresantes fleeing the Messenian War had children with helots who were then named partheniai; they were deprived of citizen rights and this led to a failed revolt. Mercy is shown and Phalanthos goes to Delphi and is told to found Taras. In Ephorus, the partheniai are the children of the youngest men sent back, from the War , to repopulate Sparta; thus their enslavement is a more serious crime here. In this case, the plotters are denounced by helots to the Spartans who convince the plotters to leave and found a colony since punishment could mean an uprising. Finally, Pausanias omits to mention any uprising, only recounting that Phalanthos was a Spartan and founder of Taras although the name of the colony is based on the hero, Taras. Here, the multiple stories linked to Taras suggest a thriving oral tradition whereby the founding includes elements that improve the standing of a polis. Sparta, for example, would not boast about Phalanthos as Taras’ founder if they promulgated Diodoros’ account of him being an instigator of a revolt against Spartan