=Character of These Colonies.=—­Greek colonies were being founded all the time from the twelfth century to the fifth; they issued from various cities and represented all the Greek races—­Dorian, Ionian, and AEolian.  They were established in the wilderness, in an inhabited land, by conquest, or by an agreement with the natives.  Mariners, merchants, exiles, or adventurers were their founders.  But with all this diversity of time, place, race, and origin, the colonies had common characteristics:  they were established at one stroke and according to certain fixed rules.  The colonists did not arrive one by one or in small bands; nor did they settle at random, building houses which little by little became a city, as is the case now with European colonists in America.  All the colonists started at once under a leader, and the new city was founded in one day.  The foundation was a religious ceremony; the “founder” traced a sacred enclosure, constructed a sacred hearth, and lighted there the holy fire.

=Traditions Concerning the Colonists.=—­The old stories about the founding of some of these colonies enable us to see how they differed from modern colonies.  The account of the settlement of Marseilles runs as follows:  Euxenus, a citizen of Phocaea, coming to Gaul in a merchant galley, was invited by a Gallic chief to the marriage of his daughter; according to the custom of this people, the young girl about the time of the feast entered bearing a cup which she was to present to the one whom she would choose for a husband; she stopped before the Greek and offered him the cup.  This unpremeditated act appeared to have been inspired from heaven; the Gallic chief gave his daughter to Euxenus and permitted him and his companions to found a city on the gulf of Marseilles.  Later the Phocaeans, seeing their city blockaded by the Persian army, loaded on their ships their families, their movables, the statues and treasures of their temple and went to sea, abandoning their city.  As they started, they threw into the sea a mass of red-hot iron and swore never to return to Phocaea until the iron should rise to the surface of the water.  Many violated this oath and returned; but the rest continued the voyage and after many adventures came to Marseilles.

At Miletus the Ionians who founded the city had brought no wives with them; they seized a city inhabited by the natives of Asia, slaughtered all the men, and forcibly married the women and girls of the families of their victims.  It was said that the women, affronted in this manner, swore never to eat food with their captors and never to call them by the name of husband; this custom was for centuries preserved among the women of Miletus.[49]

The colony at Cyrene in Africa was founded according to the express command of the oracle of Apollo.  The inhabitants of Thera, who had received this order, did not care to go to an unknown country.  They yielded only at the end of seven years since their island was afflicted with dearth; they believed that Apollo had sent misfortune on them as a penalty.  Nevertheless the citizens who were sent out attempted to abandon the enterprise, but their fellow-citizens attacked them and forced them to return.  After having spent two years on an island where no success came to them, they at last came to settle at Cyrene, which soon became a prosperous city.[50]