The Greeks Outside Greece

Most educated Westerners know at least a bit about the ancient Greeks. Fanciful images of the Parthenon and Alexander the Great and Aristotle and Olympian gods immediately present themselves before the mind’s eye. But this doesn’t even tell half the story — most of the ancient Greek world was outside of what we today thing of as Greece.

Four of the five ancient wonders of the world attributed to the Greeks — the Mausoleum of Halikarnassus, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria — were all outside of the Greek mainland. Many of the most famous thinkers of Greek culture, such as Archimedes and Herodotus, never set foot in Greece proper as far as we know. Greek kingdoms and republics spanned from the Atlantic coast of Spain to Afghanistan, ensuring Greek culture, language, customs, and learning were spread from beyond the edges of the known world in the west to the Indian kingdoms in the east.

Who were these Greeks? How and why were they different from their compatriots they left behind in mainland Greece?

Greek states spread over the world in primarily two ways: colonization along the sea routes of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and by the conquests of Alexander the Great. Each tells a different story, as the thriving republic of Massilia (present day Marseilles) had very different origins than the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom straddling parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.