Every city in today’s Western Europe outside Italy, from Spain and France to Malta, that became Greek between the first Greek settlers and the Arab conquest, and every bilingual city where Greek was spoken beside Gaulish or Punic: when Greek came, how, and when its last Greek speakers were gone. And the Greeks who came long after the cities: refugees and scholars, a Maniot village in Corsica, merchants, and the migrants of the 1960s.
Italy is not included. The Greek cities of present-day Italy, Sicily and Sardinia among them, have a page of their own: Greek Cities in Present-Day Italy. Inland Gaul and the lands north of the Alps have no city: in Lyon, Trier or London Greek speakers were a minority in Latin cities (see Minorities). Where the evidence is thin, a city is included and drawn hollow, and the doubt is stated in its record.
Pick a period to see the cities that became Greek or bilingual in it, in colour; the cities that already had Greek speakers are grey, and a dark ring marks a city whose last Greek speakers were gone by the end of the period. Or drag the year slider to see which cities had Greek speakers in any year from 700 BC to AD 1000. Hollow dots are doubtful, and dashed rings can be placed only within their region. Small grey rings are Greek cities in today’s Italy, not counted here (see Greek Cities in Present-Day Italy); grey squares are Latin cities where Greek-speaking easterners lived as a minority (see Minorities). Use the zoom buttons for the crowded coast of Provence. Hover or tap a dot for its name; select it for the full record and, for some cities, their stories.
Explorers, founders, a sea battle, a lawsuit in Athens and a shipwreck: a few things that happened in these cities, from the ancient texts and the finds.
These cities are left out under the rule used for Italy: a city counts only if Greek was one of its main languages, not if a Greek-speaking minority lived in a city that spoke Latin, Gaulish, Iberian or Punic. They are drawn on the map as grey squares. The full reasons are under Left out.
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Select a row for the full record. ? after a name: doubtful as a Greek city or as a site. Bilingual city: Greek spoken beside Gaulish or Punic. † a Greek city with a bilingual period. Grey names under Today are villages. Dates of fading are approximate.
The eight images: the overview, one map per period, the rise and fade, the Greeks who came after the cities, today’s Western Europe, and the list.
A town, not a trading post, fort, sanctuary or villa, whose residents spoke Greek. The evidence: a polis in the Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis; an early author who calls the town Greek or a town (polis) of Massalia (Hecataeus, the old periplus behind Avienus, Artemidorus in Stephanus, Strabo’s sources); civic coins with a Greek legend or a Greek-type council house; or a published excavation that argues the town itself was Greek. Greek used only by officials, soldiers, traders or a court does not count, nor do Gaulish and Iberian written in Greek letters. A Latin (or Gaulish, Iberian, Punic) city with a Greek-speaking minority is left out (see Minorities). Legends do not count: Ulysses at Lisbon, Zakynthians at Saguntum, Rhodians at Rhode, Heracles at Monaco. The site must lie in present-day Western Europe outside Italy; the Greek cities of Italy are on a page of their own.
Where the evidence is thin the city is included, drawn hollow and marked doubtful, and its record says why: five towns that only texts call Greek (Mainake, Theline, Hemeroskopeion, Alonis, Athenopolis), Heraclea from one sentence of Pliny, Béziers I from one scholar’s reading of its excavation, and five towns whose Greek rests on their coins or, for Avenio, on a text and a doubtful coin (Glanum, Cabellio, Avenio, the Kainiketai, Gaulos). References that could not be checked again are marked “unchecked” in the records.
When the place became Greek: its foundation for a Greek foundation, by the ancient date where there is one and by the archaeology otherwise; for a native town, the first evidence of Greek-speaking residents, such as civic coins with Greek legends or Greek inscriptions. Where a town is known only from texts, the date is an estimate from its context, and the record says so.
A bilingual city had Greek speakers, but another main language lived on beside Greek: Gaulish in the towns of the lower Rhône (Glanum, Cabellio, Avenio, the Kainiketai), Punic in Melite and Gaulos in Malta. A bilingual city has its own colour, and its dates are when Greek was spoken there. A Greek city that had a second main language for a time is marked †: Massalia, which Varro called “trilingual” (Greek, Latin and Gaulish), and Emporion, with its Iberian town beside it.
The town on the site is the one whose built-up area covers the ancient city; ruins outside a town count as ruins. A seat (a French prefecture, a Spanish provincial capital, a Portuguese district capital, a Maltese regional seat) counts if it stands within about 2 km of the city. Populations are the latest official figures (INSEE, INE, NSO Malta).
Five research batches by region (Provence and the Riviera; Languedoc, Corsica and inner Gaul; Iberia in antiquity; Spain after 476 with the Balearics, Ceuta and Melilla; Malta and the lands north of the Alps), then three checks: coverage against the ancient authors and the close calls; the admission, type and start of each city; and the ends. A second round with web searches added the doubtful towns, checked the Inventory and Stephanus, and recorded what stands on each site today. One dossier covers the later Greeks. The identifiers follow the Pleiades gazetteer. Every record keeps its sources and notes; the places considered and left out are listed with a reason, and each city’s “Who ended it” line names the act and the people closest to the end of Greek there.
The full table with every field, sources and notes, as a CSV table, as JSON, or as a spreadsheet with the places left out, the year-by-year series, the seats on the sites, the stories, and the later Greeks (timeline, communities, sees and figures).
Sources: M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (2004; the chapter on Spain and France by A. J. Domínguez); Strabo, books 3–4; Pseudo-Scymnus; Stephanus of Byzantium (from Hecataeus and Artemidorus); Avienus, Ora maritima; Pliny, Natural History 3; J.-C. Decourt, Inscriptions grecques de la France (2004); M. Lejeune, Recueil des inscriptions gauloises I; A. Hermary, A. Hesnard and H. Tréziny, Marseille grecque (1999); M. Bats on the Massaliote towns; D. Ugolini on Béziers and Agde; the excavators of Emporion, Rhode and Olbia; IG XIV for Malta; M. Vallejo Girvés on the eastern empire’s Spain; J. N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language (2003); the Pleiades gazetteer. Map: Natural Earth; today’s borders dashed.
These calls rest on thin or conflicting evidence. The map, the chart and the list follow the reading shown here; the alternative is given so that readers can weigh it themselves.