Fondations, diasporas et territoires dans l’Asie hellénistique au iiie siècle

Abstract

The movement of conquest launched by Alexander and the Macedonians in the last third of the iv c. was the cause and occasion of an unprecedented expansion of territories marked by the lasting presence of the Greeks and settlement of organized Greek communities. Now it was only gradually that the network of foundations was set up in order to suit the regional points at stake in the building up of the regal territories. It was therefore highly diversified. In certain areas like Northern Syria, Asia Minor or central Asia, the colonizing effort – multifarious and complex – associated different modes of settlement and several levels of appropriation. The sometimes massive influx of Greco-Macedonian populations into those areas had notably as a consequence to transform in depth the modes of occupation of the territories even though the colonial handling did not always answer the founders’expectations.

Keywords

• Hellenistic colonization
• regal foundations
• katoikiai
• Asia Minor
• Syria
• Hellenistic Orient