Megara and Miletos: Colonising with Apollo. A Structural Comparison of Religious and Political Institutions in Two Archaic Greek Polis States

Surprisingly, the interaction between Milesian and Megarian colonisation in the 7th/6th centuries BCE has rarely been addressed. Krister Hanell, in his comparative study on Megara and her colonies, published in 1934, already came to the conclusion that Megara and Miletos had built up a “Kolonisationsbündnis”, a “colonisation alliance” (HANELL, Studien, p. 135). During the 1999 conference on “Early Ionia”, the late Yuri Vinogradov delivered a paper entitled: “Milet und Megara erschließen den Pontos Euxeinos”. There he re-interpreted an important, but seldom addressed Milesian inscription (I.Milet 732), an epigram referring to a war of Archaic times in which both Miletos and Megara were involved. He revived Hanell’s observation and assumed that there were coordinated ventures by both metropoleis which he detected in the mixed Ionian-Dorian onomastics in Chersonasos and her mother city Herakleia Pontika, herself a colony of Megara. Both scholars’ hypothesis was met mostly with skepticism, but there have since been some voices in favour of their opinion. This paper aims at comparing crucial elements of Megarian and Milesian colonisation of the Propontis and Black Sea to show that in the seventh/sixth century BCE these two cities indeed acted in accordance with each other, to control access to a region that was rich in resources. This close relationship between a ‘Dorian’ and an ‘Ionian’ city is surprising. But it can be shown that both poleis shared important elements of their religious and political structures, making cooperation possible. First of all, both acted under the leadership and sanction of an Apollo oracle: Megara cooperated with that of Delphi, while Miletos had her own, that of Apollo Didymeus Milesios in Didyma. Furthermore, there are striking parallels in their political organisation; for instance the basileus, ‘king’, a remnant of the basileis ruling in Protogeometric and Geometric times, and a board of proaisimnatas/proaisimnon and aisimnatai (Megara), or aisymnetes and proshetairoi (Miletos), functioning as prytaneis of both cities’ oligarchic governments. In light of the appearance of these magistracies in the Megarian and Milesian colonies of the seventh/sixth centuries BCE, the existence of these offices can be presumed in the mother cities already before 700 BCE. The striking resemblance between Megara and Miletos hints at the existence of xenia relationships between the leading aristocratic families. Concerted mythopoiesis played a prominent role in this process: the elites of both city states were able to strengthen their contacts via interconnected kinship myths, which even took into account a common pre-Greek, Karian-Lelegian past. Additionally, Herakles and the Argonauts are recorded as visiting or founding Megarian (Byzantion, Herakleia Pontika) as well as Milesian (Kyzikos, Kios, Sinope) colonies, and thus both colonisation partners became followers of Herakles, Jason, and other paradigmatic Greek discoverer heroes that manned the ship Argo. The function of the Argonautika as a charter myth becomes evident here. The background to all of this may have been Megara’s and Miletos’ joint participation in the Eretrian coalition against Chalkis and her allies during the ‘Lelantine War’ of around 700 BCE, the first pan-Greek war, which resulted in an amazing boom of both Megara and Miletos in the 7th century. The subsequent colonisation of the Propontis and the Pontos was from a strategic point of view only possible, because Gyges’ Lydia, which was the main land power of central Asia Minor from ca 680 BCE and holding the former Phrygian key site Daskyleion/Hisartepe, permitted this expansion.