ABSTRACT
Greek history begins with the Mycenaean world, which comprised a chain of city states across mainland Greece inhabited by the historical originals of Homer’s warlords. Shortly after the capture of Troy-if that was indeed a historical event-Greece was to enter a Dark Age until the eighth century and the dawn of the history of archaic Greece. But, even in Mycenaean times, Greek states were not confined to the mainland. As early as the fifteenth century BC, there are records of Greeks in Western Anatolia (Asia Minor), and archaeology makes clear the fact that Greek expansion had already taken place, with evidence for settlements and trading centres along the Asia Minor coastline. From c. 1200 to c. 1000 a major wave of migration took place from mainland Greece to Asia Minor. Greece always comprised far more than just the well-known cities of the Greek mainland and from the eighth to the sixth century, sometimes known as the ‘Age of Colonization’, the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Greek mainland sent out large numbers of colonies, both east and west of their homeland. This, however, was not the only period during which colonies were settled, and Greek cities founded several important colonies in the fifth century and later. In this way, Sicily and Southern Italy, the Black Sea area, Africa, and even France and Spain provided sites for new Greek cities.
