A Small Greek WorldNetworks in the Ancient Mediterranean

Greek civilization and identity crystallized not when Greeks were close together but when they came to be far apart. It emerged during the Archaic period, when Greeks founded coastal city-states and trading stations in ever-widening horizons from the Ukraine to Spain. No center directed their diffusion, and the settlements ("colonies") originated from a multitude of mother cities. The "Greek center" was virtual, at sea, created as a back-ripple effect of cultural convergence following the physical divergence of independent settlements. "The shores of Greece are like hems stitched onto the lands of Barbarian peoples" (Cicero). Overall and regardless of distance, settlement practices became Greek in the making,…