4.8 Europe: 600 to 501 b.c.

Europe

Back to Europe 700 to 601 B.C.

Southern europe

In this and the adjacent centuries there was extensive admixture not only of cultures and materials but of peoples, themselves, throughout all areas of southern Europe and even northern Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. There were migrations of peoples from Greece to the Aegean islands and Asia Minor and to Italy and southern France, while Phoenicians and Carthaginians moved to Italy, Sicily and Sardinia and the various tribes in both peninsulas intermingled, fought, traded, usurped territory and consolidated villages. Peoples of varying races and languages seemed to live side by side at times, only to fight at other times. Just as diverse languages seem to be no impediment to students, business men, teachers and travelers in Europe today, so it seems to have been true throughout the centuries. Thus eastern and Greek influences became prominent in Italy and the western Mediterranean. (Ref. 75 )

Eastern mediterranean islands

There was no great political change in this century from the last except that Persia took over Rhodes and its colonies. (Ref. 38 )

Greece

The node of Greek trading was at the Peloponnesian isthmus and Greece's first major city, Corinth, had developed there. About 600 B.C. a paved way allowed ships to be hauled across the isthmus. What Corinth owed to this key position geographically, Athens owed to the discovery of silver at nearby Laurion. It was with this that Athens subsequently financed its navy using a slave work-force running to five figures. (Ref. 249 ) The Ionians attained great naval strength, but Samos, under Polycrates, became a great seapower also, using long-boats with as many as fifty oars. Greece continued to be polyglot with even the Ionians having four different dialects. (Ref. 122 , 136 , 216 , 58 )

As the city-states increased in population subsistence became a problem in view of the poor soil, and various cities solved the potential crisis in various ways. While Corinth and Chalcis established overseas colonies, Sparta attacked and conquered nearby Greek neighbors and thus developed a military state. Athens, on the other hand, developed a specialized agricultural export trade and started manufacturing based on the export of wine and oil from their grapes and olives, in exchange for grain. Miletus and Eretria participated also in this trade. In Attica the tyrant