ABSTRACT
Racial or ethnic generalization is dangerous, and not merely in the sense that it is intellectually precarious. That is, it can lead to prejudice and persecution on pseudo-rational grounds. Nevertheless, this chapter begins recklessly with just such a generalization: One of the most conspicuous characteristics of the Greeks (or Hellenes) is and always has been their mobility. The Greeks Overseas is the title of a classic and often reprinted modern book about early Greek settlement abroad, from Spain to the west coast of Turkey, from south Russia to Egypt.1 The third word of the book’s title neatly expresses the twin ideas of travel and temporary or permanent settlement on the one hand (“over-”), and of predominantly maritime activity on the other (“-seas”): Greeks swarmed over the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas, and they did not on the whole, except perhaps for their original immigration into geographical Greece and such brief land-campaigns as the conquests of Alexander the Great, do so except by sea. If one had to come up with a key concept associated with Greekness, one could do a lot worse than “overseas.”
