Corinth founds Syracuse and the Greek colonisation of the West
- Date
- c. 733 BCE
- Category
- Exploration & colonisation
- Region
- Sicily and the wider Mediterranean
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
Around 733 BCE settlers from Corinth founded Syracuse on the east coast of Sicily, soon after the Euboean foundation of Naxos. Syracuse became one of the most powerful Greek cities of the western Mediterranean.
Its founding exemplifies the great wave of Greek colonisation that, from the eighth through the sixth centuries BCE, planted hundreds of independent settlements around the Mediterranean and Black Seas, from Massalia (Marseille, c. 600 BCE) in the west to the shores of the Black Sea in the east. Driven by land hunger, population growth, trade and political strife at home, colonists carried the institutions of the polis, the Greek language and alphabet, Hellenic religion and Homeric culture across a vast arc, creating the densely Hellenised region of southern Italy and Sicily later known as Magna Graecia. Colonies maintained ritual and sentimental ties to their mother cities while governing themselves, multiplying the number of Greek poleis and stimulating commerce, coinage and cultural exchange with Phoenicians, Etruscans and indigenous peoples. This diaspora spread Greek civilisation far beyond the Aegean and shaped the later Mediterranean world that Rome would inherit.
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Empires active in c. 733 BCE
- Neo-Assyrian Empire911 BCE – 609 BCE
- Roman Kingdom753 BCE – 509 BCE
- Zhou Dynasty1046 BCE – 256 BCE
- Scythians800 BCE – 300 BCE
- Kingdom of Kush1070 BCE – 350 CE
- Phoenician City-States1200 BCE – 539 BCE
Related exploration & colonisation events
- Founding of Alexandria in Egypt331 BCE
- Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions opens the Silk Road138–c. 125 BCE
- Foundation of Carthage by colonists from Tyre814 BCE (traditional)
- Lapita voyagers settle Tonga and Samoa: first peopling of Remote Oceaniac. 900 BCE
- First Settlement of the Mariana Islands and Entry into Remote Oceaniac. 1500 BCE
- Columbus's first voyage reaches the Americas12 October 1492
Further reading
The wider story
The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire
Brisk popular narrative of Rome from its legendary kings.
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