Dr Sofia Zoumbaki

From mobility to migration and from interaction to integration: foreigners from the West in Greek towns

Private Italians and Romans started to move systematically to the East from the 3rd c. BC onwards aiming above all at the search for profit opportunities. At the beginning, isolated individual Italians and Romans are to be found at various places of the Greek mainland and the adjacent islands, but gradually they are mentioned in the epigraphic sources as a distinct group in local societies, separate from other foreigners sojourning there. Their engagements as well as their economic success differed from place to place depending on local natural resources, geographic location and the general prevailing circumstances. In various cases, these people belonged to professional networks linking eastern Mediterranean with Rome.

The aim of the paper is to offer an overview of the evolution of the presence of Italians and Romans in towns of Greece proper from the 3rd c. BC to the 1st c. AD. It will be examined, how this phenomenon ranged from mobility to migration and from cultural interaction to progressive integration and acculturation of the Westerners in Greek towns. Either attested as collectivities (e.g. cives Romani / Italici/ Ἴταλικοί/Ῥωμαῖοι + various definitions of their occupation or place of residence), as for example on Delos, or as individuals, as e.g. in Athens, these people adopted various strategies for their integration into the host societies. Furthermore, it will be attempted to shed light on their role in social and economic life of the host communities as well as on the mutual impact between the foreign and local element, which led gradually in various cases to the shaping of a new physiognomy of the Greek poleis. 

Sophia Zoumbaki is a Research Director at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), Section of Greek and Roman Antiquity (KERA), of the National Hellenic Research Foundation (NHRF). She studied History and Archaeology at the University of Athens. Thanks to a scholarship of the Austrian Ministry of Education, Sciences and Culture, she pursued her postgraduate studies at the Institute of Ancient History and Epigraphy of the University of Vienna, where she obtained her M.Phil. (1992) and her Ph.D. (1995). She has taken part in several Greek and international campaigns of field archaeology, both excavations and archaeological surface surveys (Ceos, Messene, Butrint, Oiniadai) and also worked as a volunteer at the Sculpture Collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. She has carried out several Research Programs financed by National and European funds, both as a coordinator and as a participant. Her research interests include epigraphy, prosopography and onomastics, social and economic evolutions in the Greek poleis in the Hellenistic and Roman period, civic institutions and relations of the Greek world with Rome, the presence of Roman and Italian entrepreneurs in the East, the response of ancient societies to crises and climate change. She has published over 60 articles in academic journals, conference proceedings and collective volumes. Her monographs and edited volumes deal with social dynamics and economic life in Roman Greece with a special focus on Elis and generally the Peloponnese and the Cyclades.