The Ancients - The Rise of Marseilles: France's Oldest City

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

Today it is the second largest city in France. But Marseilles is also the country’s oldest city. Founded at the turn of the 7th century BC by Greek settlers, the ancient history of Marseilles (known to the Greeks as Massalia and the Romans as Massilia) is rich. Strategically positioned close to the River Rhone it soon became a wealthy trading metropolis. Notable names are plenty. Artemis is closely linked with the city’s foundations; the explorer Pytheas hailed from Massalia. And who can forget the great Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca, who passed close by Massalia with his army enroute to Italy in 218 BC.To talk through the early ancient history of Marseilles, from its mythical Greek Mama Mia foundation story to the Battle of Alalia, Dr Joshua Hall returned to the podcast.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, we are talking about the oldest city in France. Today,

it's the second largest city in that country. And if you haven't guessed it already, it's the city of Marseille, known to the ancient Greeks as Massalia, because it was at the end of the 7th century BC, or the very start of the 6th century BC, that Greek colonists came to southern France and founded this city. Now Massalia, it's got an awesome ancient history. You've got Carthaginians, you've got Hannibal Barker crossing the river Rhone nearby, you've got Romans, you've got other western Mediterranean Greek city-states, you've got Gauls, you've got trading with as far away as Brittany, with southern Britain, with perhaps even northern Britain, and you've got explorers like Pythias who circumnavigated the British Isles

hundreds of years before the Romans arrived on that distant island. So Massalia has got some remarkable ancient history. We can't cover it all in one podcast but in today's pod we're going to be focusing in on Massalia's earlier ancient history. We're going to be looking at its founding and we're going to be looking at what happens in the aftermath of that. And to talk through this, I was delighted to get back on the podcast Dr. Joshua Hall from the Ancient World magazine. Josh has been on the podcast quite recently, you might remember a chat, all about the Battle of Himera and the First Sicilian war in the early 5th century BC. And now Josh is back to talk about Massali. He's our Western Mediterranean Greek specialist. So without further ado, here's Josh.

Josh, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for inviting me. Now, we're talking about the French city of Marseille, but back in antiquity, it's got one of the most extraordinary histories of the ancient Mediterranean. Yeah, the modern city of Marseille is founded or has grown on top of the ancient Greek city of Massalia, rendered by the Romans as Massilia, though I prefer the Greek rendering Massalia, which was founded as part of a larger movement of people that scholarship has fluctuated in its name for, but is generally referred to as Greek colonization. Although the

more modern concept of colonization doesn't necessarily apply to what was going on from the 8th century BC onwards with the Greeks. We don't necessarily see cities in the Aegean or the Eastern Mediterranean purposefully sending out these colonizing expeditions to grab more land for themselves, for the metropolis, the mother city. Rather, it is better seen as a migration from the east to the west, or at least to the central Mediterranean. So let's first of all look at the topography of Marseille, and in particular, in antiquity. The topography, the geography, was it ideal for a Greek colony? I think it was. We hear in the literary sources that Massalia was founded on essentially a craggy peak overlooking a very useful bay. And I think the description that Caesar gives is one of the best. He described it as a city washed on three sides by the sea with a fortification wall with a rampart protecting it on the other

side. And I think that gives a good idea of what the city of Massalia was. It was built on a fortified or fortifiable promontory that overlooked a bay. And for listeners who aren't that familiar with ancient shipping, having a really good bay was important because in this era, ships didn't anchor out at sea and send tenders in, things like that. Instead, they had to beach generally every night from what we think. And so having a bay meant that a city could actually engage in considerable trade rather than if it was just a coastal city with nowhere for ships to land it would almost be useless um i don't want to say it would be utterly useless but massalia's location beyond its defensible qualities and the wonderful bay it is just

southeast of the mouth of the river rhone which is one of the major rivers that runs through modern France from the center of the country and then empties into the Mediterranean. This was a major trade corridor for centuries. And although I don't know that much about modern French economics, I'm sure that it probably still serves as an economic hub. And so in this way, still serves as an economic hub. And so in this way, Massalia was founded both in a strong position but also a lucrative and economically strategic position. So from what you're saying there, the geographic strengths, the topographic strengths of it is its very close proximity to the coast, but also this defensive fortification, this defensive position, and having access to the

river Rhone. Yes. And the fortified nature of the city is something that we see crop up in the sources. It's not just something that modern historians have said because, oh, it was built on a series of about three hills and they are very easy to protect. This is something that was noted in antiquity, that it was not a vulnerable site. And this actually is somewhat common for new foundations in the central Mediterranean in this period of both Phoenician and Greek, quote, colonization. Really good examples are the earliest Greek foundation in the central Mediterranean in the Bay of Naples on the island of Ischia, Pethikousai, as it was called. Not necessarily the most hospitable island for anyone who's been there, but it is relatively well-protected being an island. But then, you know,

looking at foundations on Sicily, the original foundation of Syracuse was supposedly on Ortigia, the original foundation of Syracuse was supposedly on Ortigia, which is the small island on which sits much of the ancient city. And then on the complete opposite end of the island is the Phoenician or was the Phoenician city of Motia, which was founded on a small island protected from the mainland of Sicily by a lagoon. And there are a lot of other foundations like that throughout the area, including in some of the Phoenician foundations on Sardinia, which also share this very protected nature. So I think in many ways, Massilia is not unique amongst these foundations for its defensiveness. And that is probably why the Phakaeans, the group of Greeks who supposedly founded the city, were drawn to its particular location. Of course, because when you consider it, when you're thinking of these colonists of these first few settlers all those hundreds of years ago, they're traveling to a land which they probably don't know too much about, and they probably don't know too much about the local people either.

don't know too much about the local people either. It depends on which version of a foundation you believe though, because the ancient foundation myths make it out to be that the Fakaians were somewhat naive. They didn't really know what they were getting into. But if you look at more modern narratives that are based in archaeological exploration, especially generally of the region around Marseille because we don't have that much from the city itself, which we can talk about later in this podcast. But there was definitely contact before the traditional foundation date for Massalia of 600 BC. We have Corinthian pottery imports a century before this or so, and other evidence of contact and trade between the wider Mediterranean world and essentially the area around the mouth of the Rhone. And a lot of more recent descriptions of the origin of Massalia describe it as being a slow coalescence of traders finding themselves on this promontory

just south of the mouth of the river that, you know, it's easy to protect. You can beat your ships there. If we all gather there, it'll be safe for us. And then eventually this became a larger city. And there very well could have been a mass influx of Phakians at some point, around 600 as well. I don't think we need to discount that aspect of the foundation. But in terms of describing the people who came and helped settle this area, I don't think I'd say that they were entirely unfamiliar with it. Because again, the Mediterranean was very connected by the dawn of the 6th century. It was a very connected place. So how familiar they would have been, there are degrees of that. But I don't think that it was

something like a Wild West situation, that you have these either naive or glory-seeking Greeks coming to this big open wilderness, not knowing what to expect. Well, you mentioned it almost at the start, what you were saying there, the foundation myth. Of course, a lot of these Hellenic city-states have got a city of myth and a city of what actually happened. What is the foundation myth around Massalia? So the core of the city's foundation myth revolves around a Celtic or Ligurian chieftain named Nannes by our sources. Supposedly, he had a daughter named either Peta or Gyptis or Guptis, it varies in the tradition, who was getting married around the time of the arrival of the Phakaian Greeks to the area. They were new to that particular group, supposedly new to the region.

They were invited in. They made friends with Nanus and all that. So they were invited to the ceremony in which the daughter was picking her future husband from amongst apparently quite a few suitors. The implication is they were of the native peoples. They weren't Greeks. However, she gave the ceremonial or whatever you want to call it, cup of water, which indicated her choice of husband to Protus, the oikist, the supposed founder of Massalia, who was the leader

of this group of Phakaeans. This indicated that she wanted him to be her husband, and of course they fall in love and all of this. They get married, and Nanus gives the Phakians, and especially his new son-in-law, a grant of land on which they then built the city of Massalia. There are some variants to the story, but that's kind of the gist of it. But it does get a little bit more complicated and adds in a wonderful bit of Greek versus barbarian, I don't want to say nonsense, but propaganda that a lot of these Greek stories have. to the future Massaliots, his son got very jealous and he attempted to infiltrate the city with a large group of warriors of whatever group they came from and planned to slaughter the Greeks. However, once again in a classic literary twist of fate, one of their kin was a woman who had taken a Greek lover. So because of her love for this wonderful, handsome Greek lad that she'd been with, she betrayed the plot and in the end, the Hellenes slaughtered the Ligurians.

Honestly, I think both of these stories are probably nonsense in later editions. Not everyone necessarily agrees with that, but I'm very skeptical of any of these stories that sound like a modern romantic comedy or tragedy type film. Was there a Gallic Mamma Mia going on at this point? I doubt it. But again, earlier commentators were much more willing to believe. In an 1854 dictionary of Greek and Roman geography, we actually find these lines. Quote, the traditions of the early history of Massalia have an appearance of truth. Everything is natural.

A woman's love founded and saved Massalia. A woman's tender heart saved the life of the noble Englishman who rescued the infant colony of Virginia from destruction, and the same gentle and heroic woman Pocahontas, by marrying another Englishman, made peace between the settlers and the savages, his words not mine, and secured for England a firm footing in Chesapeake Bay. Obviously, I mean, the story of Pocahontas itself is just a problematic crapstorm of nonsense in many ways. The romanticized version of it presented by the English is nothing like the reality. And I think that it's a good parallel for these stories about the founding of Massalia. They're romantic tales told in an age when sometime after the founding of the city, when Greek cities throughout the Mediterranean and even Rome itself were trying to establish both their backstory and justify why they existed

where they existed. Obviously, we see this most spectacularly with Rome and the Aeneid, all of which I'm sure is just completely made up. It's a wonderful story, great poem. I love Virgil, just completely made up. It's a wonderful story, great poem. I love Virgil, but the Aeneas tale, it does date back quite early in Italian history. We have evidence from quite early, before the kings were expelled from Rome of a cult of Aeneas. But even then, a traveling Trojan did not found the city of Rome or Alba Longa, just as I highly doubt that a wonderful, idyllic marriage founded the city of Massalia. Although, supposedly, there was a family that existed through into the Roman period who bore a name similar to Protus, something that would have been derived from it. So, Protus himself may have been an actual figure.

Well, maybe it was a myth, a fictional story developed on perhaps some aspect of truth, but then as you say, they become more fictional, more fictional, more fictional. But what has the archaeology told us? Do we have any idea what the truth is about Massilia's foundation? Not really. I mean, again, we know that there were trade links with the rest of the Mediterranean and especially the Greek world with this part of southern France. And I guess this is a good time to talk about the problems of evidence for Massalia. So we don't have all that much literary evidence. Strabo in his geography goes on a fairly lengthy digression about Massalia, we have a handful of mentions in Justin's Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, who the latter, Pompeius Trogus, as he called it, supposedly, that was essentially a universal history of the Mediterranean. But there was an entire chapter, as it's epitomized by Justin, talking about Massalian history, but it also crops up in a couple other places throughout the history.

up in a couple other places throughout the history. But aside from those two sources, we don't have a major narrative or anything. There's no Livy or Thucydides for Massalian history, unfortunately. Although Thucydides does mention Massalia, so I should make that clear. Massalia was mentioned in other places, just not in much detail. But these days, just not in much detail, not much detail. But these days we look to archaeology for fleshing out our understanding of major cities throughout the ancient world or just the ancient world in general. And Massalia or Marseille, I should say, because Marseille is the problem here, was built directly on top of the ruins of the Greek city. So for a very long time, there was no excavation in the city, really. It was only in the wake of the Second World War, when there was considerable destruction within the city and rebuilding, that we start to see

larger excavations. This still really hasn't given us a whole lot of information. It's unfortunate that we don't know the street plan and things for Greek Massalia because we do have that kind of information for other Greek cities in the central Mediterranean. Most of those on Sicily we know about, a lot of them in Magna Graecia. But unfortunately, because Marseille is the second city of France, and it has been, I mean, unlike other Mediterranean cities after the fall of the Roman Empire, Marseille didn't really see a decline. It was less important perhaps, but then eventually, if I remember right, it became a bishopric sometime in the 10th century or so. And then it was both the seat of power and a seat of trade after that. So it's

been continually developing, which means that we don't get to see what's under it. Funny enough, I mean, Rome actually suffers from this in many ways. My main area of research is early Rome. And while there are some really good ongoing projects right now in the city, because it has been inhabited since the final Bronze Age, at least some of the hills. We can't get to all of the historic layers all over the city, and the same is true in Marseille. But some interesting things have been excavated. The old wharf in Marseille has been excavated, so we have an idea of where the coastline was. idea of where the coastline was. Some of the massive fortification wall has been found,

which has led us both to understand that it was built in about 510, but also that the stones from what I've read, I don't work on the archaeology of Marseille in much detail, but supposedly came from a quarry about 25 kilometers away. And we've learned a few other interesting things about it from where archaeologists have been able to get in. But in terms of talking about the foundation of the city and trying to look to archaeological evidence for it, there is very little that we can say. Fair enough. Well, let's go on to Massalia's neighbours, as it were, particularly the Gauls and the Carthaginians. When do we start to hear about contact between Massalia and these neighbors? I mean, it depends on the source you believe, obviously. So with the foundation myth, we see hostile interactions immediately.

Nanus's son, Comannus, when he tried to infiltrate the city, could be some sort of remembrance of a very hostile reception that the Phakaeans received when they landed there. But it's not the only indication that the early settlers had to fight for their survival. Justin wrote that the Massaliots performed great exploits both in defending themselves against the fierce Gauls and in attacking of themselves those by whom they had previously been molested. Strabo provides us a little more insight by saying that this city had a well-stocked armory with weapons to hold out against the barbarians and that they seized the more fertile plains around the city through force of arms. Because if you think back to my description of the city at the beginning of this episode, it was not exactly a place that you could cultivate grain or really do all that much agriculturally. So they had to expand. And I have a feeling that even if

local tribes were fine with the city being founded on the promontory where it was, once they started to try to grab some of the more fertile space with the city being founded on the promontory where it was, once they started to try to grab some of the more fertile space around the city, it is understandable that they came into armed conflict with the Gauls or Ligurians amongst whom they live. And the literary sources are certainly confident in this. There's little reason to believe from what the literature says that it was peaceful immediately after the foundation. Again, though, the evidence of trade shows that there was peaceful interaction. So it's not necessarily a world completely at war or the Warhammer 40 case saying there is only war doesn't apply necessarily to this situation. But there probably was some

level of armed conflict almost immediately after the foundation of the city. And Massalia did send out colonies of its own throughout the coast around it, perhaps as far away as Iberia. And these were probably, I say this with absolutely no confidence, but they probably had to defend these when they sent them out. I don't imagine that they were necessarily peaceful. If we look at the purpose of colonization in other situations, like in Rome, the Romans used colonies to secure territory. Even if they didn't necessarily wipe out a local population when they were conquering, for instance, Italy, they would send a colony of their citizens to settle and essentially provide both a new town and a garrison to keep control of the region.

And I have a feeling that's probably what Massalia was doing in this period. But again, that's not necessarily an argument from the evidence itself. That is more of a theoretical postulation. Of course. No, of course. Fair enough. And I do realize I did say that the Carthaginians were neighbors of the Massaliots. And of course, that's probably not exactly true. They are in the Western Mediterranean, but not exactly bordering them. They are in the western Mediterranean, but not exactly bordering them.

But when do we start to hear of the Massaliots coming into contact with the Carthaginians? Perhaps from the very beginning. We don't necessarily hear that. Well, I don't necessarily think that the Carthaginians tried to prevent the foundation of the city. But we do hear about some naval conflicts between the Massaliotes and the Carthaginians. In particular, Justin notes that there was some sort of conflict over fishing boats, because apparently the people of Massalia made a lot of their living from the sea, both through fishing, but also through piracy, a topic that I think we should come back to later just on its own, talking about the Battle of Alalia here in a bit. But it's possible that

the Carthaginians and the Messaliotes did come to blows on the sea fairly early on, but in many ways that relies on an interpretation of the situation being Greeks versus barbarians in the central Mediterranean, which is not what the evidence plays out. A lot of earlier historians, and by earlier I mean pre-2000s, historians created a narrative of the Greeks who settled in Sicily, Italy, and southern France having to constantly battle back the Carthaginians and the native peoples of those areas. I mean, there is some literary evidence to support this, but you have to look at it critically. So with Massalia in particular, the friendly trading relations between them and their neighbors belies that it was not a completely hostile situation as I just talked about, but we can look deeper

and shift focus to Sicily just for a minute to see that this was positioning or creating this narrative of Greek versus barbarian in the central Mediterranean served a political purpose, especially for the denominated tyrants of Syracuse, notably Gelon, who was the victor at the Battle of Himera against the Carthaginians in 480 BC, and his brother Hieron, who beat an Etruscan fleet off the coast of Cumae on the Bay of Naples in 474. They both used their victories to essentially sell themselves as guardians of the greek world against the evil barbarians and this is because they were constantly playing this pan-mediterranean political game with the greeks in the east in the aegeanan. This is the period of the Persian Wars. They had just beaten back

the great menace of Xerxes. And so the Western Greeks, or at least these two tyrants, in an effort to really secure their place in the Hellenic world, said, oh, look, we're doing the same thing. We're beating back these evil barbarians in the west. Galon's victory at Hemera was synchronized by the Sicilian Greeks as occurring either on the day of Thermopylae or of Salamis, in fact. So there is a deliberate effort to make this happen. And Huron commissioned the poet Pindar to celebrate his victory at Cumae in Pindar to celebrate his victory at Kumai in Pindar's first Pythianode. And he frames this in very epic terms along the lines that you would expect to see being talked about in the Persian wars. And so it's this type of framing that both modern historians and I think later ancient authors picked up on. And so it would

be easy to justify a statement such as, oh, well, the Messaliates, they had to fight back the Carthaginians right when they founded the city because those evil barbarians captured part of the fishing fleet. Because I mean, this would be expected. It's a tapas running through the literature that the Carthaginians were the great menace of the Western Greeks. But I mean, this isn't really the case. And again, going back to Sicily in 480, the Punic army that invaded was led by a man named Hamilcar. We generally say Hamilcar of the Magonid dynasty. And it's framed both by ancients and by a lot of modern commentators or especially narrative historians as being, you know, great Carthaginian invasion threatening Magna Graecia. Hamilcar's mother was Syracusan Greek.

His allies who requested him to bring an army to the island were both Greeks, notably Anaxaleos, the tyrant of Regium at this point. And it was just an internal squabble between city-states that had long, hateful relationships with one another. It's not about political blocks based on ethnicity in this period necessarily. And so I think we have to read a lot of these early encounters, especially those between Phakaean Greeks, whether it's in Massalia or somewhere else, as possibly being part of this. Because again, there was trade going on and Massalia was almost certainly no different than any of the Etruscan ports or the Greek ports in that they had people from everywhere doing business within the city. Again, the

evidence is scant to almost none because of our limited knowledge of the archaeology in Marseille itself. But I really don't see there being major conflicts up until the Battle of Alalia, where we probably do need to see some sort of real tension between Carthaginians and Phakians. What caused the anarchy? How did medieval migrants shape the language I'm speaking right now? Who won the Hundred Years' War? Could England's lost patron saint be buried under a tennis court in Suffolk? How did England's last medieval king

end up under a car park? And were the Dark Ages really all that dark? I'm Dr Kat Jarman. And I'm Matt Lewis. On Gone Medieval, we'll uncover the most exciting and unexpected stories about the Middle Ages, hearing from the best and brightest minds. We will disentangle fact from fiction, bring you the latest discoveries, and reveal how the so-called Dark Ages laid the foundations for much of the world we're living in today. Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. you mentioned just then the battle of alalia what is the story of this battle just then the Battle of Valalia, what is the story of this battle? So the Battle of Valalia, or alternatively, and I think there are at least some fairly prominent Italians who prefer this name, the Battle of the Sardinian Sea, was a naval encounter that's portrayed by our sources as

kind of a major changing point or just a really important defeat for a group of Phakaeans, not from Massalia, but from elsewhere, in the waters off of the island of Sardinia that may have signaled a shift in importance from Greek traders plying the Tyrrhenian Sea to Etruscan and Carthaginian traders. But there is a bit more backstory to that. So the town of Alalia or modern Aleria on Corsica was founded by a group of Phakians, much like Marseilles, who had left their homeland in a fairly rough period. So we'll see, or I'll mention a couple of times, the Ionian Greek city of Fakaya in modern Turkey was essentially falling under the influence of the Persian Empire. The Persians had been expanding into Anatolia and eventually came

to control the Ionian coast, which eventually led to the Ionian revolt and obviously the Persian wars that have become so famous thanks to people like Zack Schneider. But there seems to have been significant emigration from the beginning of this period onwards. Despite Fakaya being a fairly successful city, they supposedly carried on a lucrative trade with the Iberian city of Tartessos before perhaps Phoenician monopolization of the trade. But again, I'm skeptical of the idea of monopolization or thalassocracy in this period. But a group of immigrants in the 6th century settled at Alaria, modern Alaria, ancient Alalia and Corsica. But they seemed to be fine. They were probably just eking out a very modest subsistence lifestyle

where they settled. But around 546 BC, a second wave of immigrants came from Phakia and settled in Alalium. According to the literary sources, immediately after they came, they started raiding the shipping lanes of the Turanian Sea. Obviously, this really annoyed their neighbors because the Greeks weren't the only ones using the waters between Italy and then the islands of Corsica and Sardinia for trade. The Etruscans and Carthaginians had been doing this for a very long time, and the Greeks almost from the beginning were also part of this, I'm sure. But these new Phocaians disrupted this trade. There was a lot of piracy in the central Mediterranean, so they must have been doing

something very obnoxious to get notice to the point that an allied fleet had to come and put them down. So after a few years of them doing this or practicing piracy off of Corsica, eventually the Carthaginians and Etruscans got sick of it. They sent an allied fleet to hunt down the pirates and they came to blows somewhere in the Sardinian Sea. Traditionally, we say it was off of Alalia, but I don't know that we actually have a location for it. And the Alalians, the Phakaians win Academy and Victory. Supposedly they came off better than the Carthaginians or Etruscans. However, they were forced to leave Alalia, which I'll come back to in a second. And the Carthaginians and the Etruscans are said to have taken a lot of prisoners and destroyed many of their ships. Spectacularly, out of this, we have a

group of the prisoners being taken back to the Etruscan city of Caire or Kisra in Etruscan and being stoned to death. The place that they were stoned to death was then considered to be cursed and the gods disapproved of what the Cairetans did and so they had to appease them. And you mentioned it earlier, is this then for this battle, is this a big turning point for Massalia and for the Greek cities in the western Mediterranean in general? I don't necessarily think that it was. You can't explain economic phenomena with single events generally. I mean, maybe stock market crash leading to the Great Depression. That I'll give as a major event. But trade continues throughout this period after Alalia. Eventually, we do see

shifting trade routes from Gaul going through the Alps and into Northern Italy and a little bit more of an emphasis on Etruscan goods going to Eastern Gaul and into parts of modern Germany. But there's a lot more at play in terms of shifting power structures within the Bronze Age culture up there at that point. This is the period really of transition from Hallstatt culture to Le Tène culture, which I'm not equipped to talk about, unfortunately. But they're two distinctly identified cultural periods identified through archaeology throughout Gaul and into parts of Germany. So there's a lot of shifting going on. But what we do see actually in the period after Alalia is an expansion of Massalia imports or exports, I guess, to its hinterlands, to native settlements

in its area, as well as into central Gaul, like up the Rhone Valley. Carthaginian wine seems to have been supplanted by Greek wine now being grown around the area of Massalia. The evidence is through the transport amphorae, the types of vessels used to move the wine back and forth. There's a shift to pottery made in Massalia, thus almost certainly was Massalian wine going up. And this may have had absolutely nothing to do with the battle. Some people claim that it took this long for the vines planted by the original settlers of Massalia to really mature and for them to start being able to produce wine commercially. And I don't see any reason to

doubt that and see that as one of the major factors rather than seeing the Battle of Alalia as being a turning point where, oh, well, the Massaliats can't transport by sea anymore, so they shift their focus to local sales. I think that that's a dangerous leap to make, even though to the ancients, this may have been a perception, but on what evidence an ancient historian would make this claim is unknown. We know that relations between Massalia and Etruria didn't necessarily fall off after this, as you might expect in the framing of the Alalias, some big battle between different ethnic groups. So we seem to see this increase of trade with the inland, the Gallic interior up the Rhone Valley

and also into central Gaul. Is this also, do you think, when we start seeing Massalia starting to really grow? It could be. I will be very honest. I do not know the archaeology of their colonies that they sent out. So I don't know when we think these were founded, but this could be. I mean, it would make sense. And if there is some truth to the idea that they weren't plying the seas as much after the Battle of Alalia, it would make sense. But again, you know, there could have been other reasons that this shift took place or that this expansion took place. For all we know, there could have been some sort of weakness amongst the Gauls at this point that allowed more expansion. There could have just been simply a taste for Massaliate wine. Maybe it was better than what they had been buying from the Etruscans beforehand. Actually, there's a grave traditionally known as the Princess of Vix from east central France. I think it's in the region of Mount Lasios. I can't remember the name of that mountain ever for some reason. But amongst the grave goods, I think we actually see good evidence of

trade continuing regardless of ethnic origin. This burial dates between about 520 and 500, somewhere in that region. And amongst a lot of jewelry, probably native productions, as well as a diadem being on the buried woman's head, there was included a Greek bronze crater, which traditionally is said to have been Laconian in production. There were Etruscan bronze vases, as well as two clay Athenian cups, which very well could have come via Massalia, because we know the Massaliates carried out lucrative trade with the Athenian cups, which very well could have come via Massalia because we know the Massalia carried out lucrative trade with the Athenians. But we see there just how diverse trade continued to be into Gaul all the way through the end of the 6th century.

So whether or not there was ever a point that major shifts happened, there's a gradual die-off of different types of pottery being imported throughout this period off and on. I think it's difficult to talk about significant events leading to this, and we have to see more abstract economic forces at work. So do we think there is this evident connection between Massalia and northern Italy, Etruria? I would assume so. It's not necessarily the best evidence for this, but at a location called Pacmejo, I think is the pronunciation. It's from near the Pyrenees, and there was discovered a small metal, I would call it something like a tablet, but it's a document.

It's an incised document. And it's what looks to be either a purchase or a rental agreement between an Etruscan and probably a Gaul, I think, or an Iberian for the use of a ship or buying a ship. But one side, not the Etruscan side, the other side is written in the Ionic Greek alphabet, and I think really summarizes the trade situation along the southern French coast at this point. It's multi-ethnic. There probably aren't trade barriers between people just because of the Battle of Wallalia or anything like that. Okay, so for settlements like Massalia and for other settlements along the southern coast, it's not like one ethnicity, another ethnicity. It sounds, as you say, very much the archaeology suggests that it's a multi-ethnic society. I mean, that's the case

throughout the central Mediterranean in this period, though. The best example, simply because we have a lot of archaeological documentation from them, are some of the Etruscan ports. So the major Etruscan coastal centers were actually just off the coast and they had port cities. They built port cities to handle the trade with the wider Mediterranean. And in places like Gravisca or Gravisca, one of the ports, we have evidence of, you know, Gravisca, one of the ports. We have evidence of Carthaginians, Greeks, etc. There was actually a port called Punicum. That name betrays the fact that there were certainly a lot of Phoenicians coming and going there. The port of Pyrgi, one of Kyrae's ports, again, alludes to a multi-ethnic exchange. Perhaps not necessarily permanently settled people, but we do know that Greek artisans settled throughout Etruria

through both epigraphy. We can see some of their families evolving in Etruria, but also through literary evidence, people like Demaratus of Corinth, who supposedly fled to Tarquinia to flee a tyrant back in the Aegean. And I think that's a good way of looking at what's going on on the southern French coast is that these aren't necessarily entirely Greek settlements. And I don't really see in terms of trade that ethnicity made much of a difference. Language barrier, I'm sure, made things more difficult, but I don't think it really created much of a problem. The only caveat to that is with citizenship. This is something that we don't necessarily have good information for Massalia on, but if we look at other Greek cities throughout the Mediterranean, citizenship was a complex issue. So at certain

points, like in Athens, you had to prove that both parents had Athenian citizenship in order for you to be considered a citizen. We don't necessarily know what the conditions in Massalia were like, but I would guess that if you had a father who was a Greek, you almost certainly would have been considered to be a Massaliate citizen. But that does kind of lead into the civic structure of Massalia, and this may shed a little bit of light on that. We know a little bit about the Massaliate government, at least probably in the later periods of its history. It was ruled or governed by a council of 600 persons known as the Timukoi, or the honored ones, those who held honor, something like that. And they held office for life. Above this group

was a council of 15 who oversaw day-to-day functions of the government. And then once again, above these was a group of three people who held supreme command, perhaps with one of them actually holding ultimate power. But from our sources to become either one of those three or one of the 15, a man had to have children and be at least a third generation descendant of a Massiliate citizen. Obviously, that clause could not have been there from the very beginning of the city. And in fact, Aristotle implies the city was once ruled by an oligarchy, which was certainly different than this, but we have no real details on that. But I think this citizenship requirement to hold the absolute highest offices may imply that to be part of the 600 or to just be a citizen, you didn't necessarily have to have

what some groups these days would call pure blood. I'm sure that you could probably have a mixed heritage, much like I mentioned Hamilcar, the Carthaginian earlier who had a Syracusan mother but was leading a large Carthaginian army and is referred to as a Carthaginian by our Greek sources. I have a feeling that this is probably a good reflection of what it took to be a Massalia, that you probably had to have had some sort of Greek heritage from Massalia, maybe Phakia. But if you were a Celt living in the city, I imagine that you would probably have had some sort of status similar to a medic in Athens. So you were allowed to live there. It was your home, but you weren't necessarily a full citizen. But that's just speculation.

Of course, of course. And I'm just going to move on a little bit here, Josh, to Massalia's symbol, the symbol of the city. Of course, with Thebes, we have the club. With Athens, we have the owl. But do we have any idea what the symbol of Massalia was? Sort of. The best evidence for this is numismatic. So we actually have a lot of Massalia coinage. It was in widespread use and almost certainly influenced Gallic coinage when the Gauls started to actually make their own or mint their own coin. So it's helpful. And if we take Massalia coinage as an example, which we probably should, there were two images common. On the obverse, we often find Artemis. It may exclusively be

Artemis. I don't know the entire corpus of their coins. I'll be very upfront and honest about that. We find Artemis, sometimes including archery equipment. Then on the reverse, we find a stylized lion. I would say that these should be seen as the city symbols. And indeed, actually, some modern interpretations take this as fact. I just gave a talk at Wilson College, Cambridge about Greek warfare in video games. So this is right at the forefront of my mind. In the game Rome 2 Total War, which I'm sure quite a few of your listeners have played or are familiar with if they're ancient history enthusiasts, the only playable Greek faction or Hellenic, not Hellenistic kingdom, but playable Hellenic faction in the base game is the city of Massalia. the city of Massalia. And that game, for ludic reasons, uses symbols to identify different armies and things belonging to different countries. And they use the lion found on the reverse of

Massalia coinage as the city's symbol. You see it on things like hanging banners and elsewhere in the game. And I think that's probably pretty fair. It is very striking. It's a beautiful image, and we do find it on their coins. But again, like almost everything else I've said, comes with the caveat that we find it on other Phakaian coins as well. The city of Alea, or modern Velia in southern Italy, was founded by the people who were forced to flee Alalia after the battle. The Carthaginians and Etruscans essentially evicted them. Etruscans eventually settled there, for which we recently got some wonderful new archaeological evidence proving Etruscan, probably Etruscan occupation of the island. But the fleeing Phrygans founded a new city in southern Italy, and their coins also bore

the lion in the same way as the Massiliate coins. But on the obverse of theirs, we find Athena more often. So there is still some difference there. But we can possibly explain the Artemis on the Massiliate coins because part of the foundation legend that I didn't get to touch on is that the Phakaians coming to found Massalia consulted an oracle who referred them to the cult of Artemis in Ephesus to give them guidance. And they brought along a priestess of Artemis who took a statue with her of the goddess to Massalia. Thus, when they founded the city, she sort of became like the patron of the city, which there is some corroborating evidence to her importance.

Supposedly, when the Romans were building the Temple of Diana on the Aventine Hill, they copied the cult statue from the Temple of Artemis in Massalia. There may be some truth to the importance of Artemis there, if she's appearing on coinage and all of this. Joshua, that was fantastic. I wish I could go on to talk about Rome, but I said we are basically run out of time now. Thank you so much for coming on the show to talk about Massalia.

Thank you for inviting me. And if you ever want to try to get to the later history of Massalia, I would be very happy to come back.