Journal Article

Les Phocéens, Marseille et la Gaule (viie-iiie s. av. J.-C.)

Bats, Michel

2012

Overview

Last of the expeditions of the Greek archaic colonization, the Phocean colonization in the western Mediterranean assumes a particular dimension owing to a real convergence between the strength of the metropolis’ maritime activity, the context of Mediterranean exchanges between prexis and emporia and the opening out of new fields of exploration in the outermost West. In pursuance of that settlement in Gaul towards 600 B.C., Marseilles experiences a period of exploitation of the potentialities (vi - v c. B.C.), along the Gallic coasts towards Spain (Tartessos and the silver mines of the Sierra Nevada) with the foundations of Emporion and Mainakê and inland, towards the Celtic principalities of the North-East, then as chief interlocutor in southern Gaul. With the foundation of a series of settlements between Iberia and Liguria, in the likeness of the contemporaneous coloniae maritimae civium romanorum, the Hellenistic era is marked by the assertion of the city over its territory in the face of the native populations and, at sea, by the side of Rome opposite the Carthaginians. For all their length of time, it is not always easy to measure the impact of the cultural relationships in the creation of spaces and identities in southern Gaul.

• Publisher: Presses universitaires du Midi
• Subject: acculturation / Greek colonization / Marseilles / Phocean / protohistoric southern Gaul