ABSTRACT
Cyrene1 was founded in 631 BC according to a tradition recorded in later historians; Herodotus gives a full account of the circumstances. The colonists came from the island of Thera in the central Aegean, the volcanic island now known as Santorini which had erupted catastrophically in the middle of the second millennium BC. After that the fragment of the shattered island which had survived had been sparsely inhabited, but was more substantially resettled by Dorian Greeks migrating in the Dark Age, around 1,000 BC. The resources of the island were limited. It has good, fertile soil over the volcanic ash and rock, but a severe shortage of water, and it is quite clear that such a place could easily suffer from overpopulation, the reason given for sending out the colony.
