ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

colonies, the ethnic origins of Roman' colonists, and the reaction of local populations tocolonization.Statist Foundation v. Colonial ActionAn essential treatment of the motivations for colonization, although on the Greek side,can be found in R. Osborne's article entitled "Early Greek Colonization? The Nature ofGreek Settlement in the West," which challenges conventional theories of colonization,especially overpopulation, land hunger, and commercial motives. 34In this article,Osborne notes that colonization as a concept has strong statist overtones, wherein thefounding of a colony is not the goal, but a means to further political or cultural controlover the territory around the colony.Osborne concludes that it is necessary to focus onthe character of the settlements themselves, rather than rely on literary tradition alone todefine the colonies. While explaining this new attitude towards Greek colonialfoundations in Italy, Osborne generalizes all Roman colonization as undertaken formilitary reasons and notes that "settlers may be specifically chosen because they willbenefit from grants of land, and careful provision may be made for equal shares of landfor all."His cautions about statist overtones and the need to focus on the character ofthe settlements and the role of the individual are not reflected in his use of a timelessRoman colonization as a comparandum for its Greek counterpart.Osborne (1998), pp. 251-269.Ibid. pp. 251-252.Ibid. p. 252.11