Description
Book SynopsisGreek 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: mother cities were numerous and the new settlements (colonies) would often engender more settlements. The Greek center was at sea; it was formed through back-ripple effects 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 and Greek communities far more resembled each other than any of their particular neighbors like the Etruscans, Iberians, Scythians, or Libyans. The contrast between center and periphery hardly mattered (all was peri-, around), nor was a bi-polar contrast with B
Trade ReviewMalkin has written a thought-provoking and very readable book, which introduces a promising new method to the study of Greek colonisation and identity. Jorrit M. Kelder, Landscape History this book succeeds in evoking a compelling image of The Greek Wide Web as multidirectional, decentralized, nonhierarchical, boundless and proliferating, accessible, expansive, and interactive.
Table of ContentsList of Figures and Maps ; Acknowledgements ; A note on transliteration ; Abbreviations ; 1. Introduction: Networks and History ; 2. Island Networking and Hellenic Convergence: From Rhodes to Naukratis ; 3. Sicily and the Greeks: Apollo Archegetes and the Sikeliote Network ; 4. Herakles and Melqart: Networking Heroes ; 5. Networks and Middle Grounds in the Western Mediterranean ; 6. Cult and Identity in the Far West: Phokaians, Ionians, and Hellenes ; Conclusion
