Wandering Greeks by Robert Garland

a certain Timesias of Clazomenae had acquired the site, but he had been driven out by the Thracians. As a result the site was unoccupied at the time of their arrival, just as Elea had been at the time of the arrival of the Phocaeans.
    Plans to Relocate “All the ionians” in the West
    The mass migration of the Phocaeans and the Teans before the Persian advance into Asia Minor in the 540s speaks eloquently of the fear and hatred that the Persians instilled in the Greeks. According to Herodotus there was more than one occasion when the Ionians en masse thought the unthinkable, viz the wholesale evacuation of their homeland. The sixth-century sage Bias of Priene, anticipating Persia’s increasing domination in the region, had allegedly recommended that they should undertake a mass exodus to Sardinia and “found a single city of all the Ionians.”In this way, he declared, they would “free themselves from slavery, become prosperous by taking possession of the largest of all the islands, and rule over others” (1.170.2). Herodotus judged the plan to be “eminently practical” and observed that, if the Ionians had adopted it, they “would have prospered more than any other Greeks.” Bias, if we are to lend the story any credence, evidently understood what are referred to today as the human development gains that derive from relocation.
    Following the failure of the Ionian Revolt five years later, the inhabitants of Zancle invited the Ionians to found a new city in northeast Sicily at a place called Kale Akte (Fair Promontory). The only Greeks to take up the offer, however, were the Milesians and the Samians, andin both cases it was only a fraction of their populations that did so. The majority of the Milesians who had survived the fall of their city to the Persians in 494 had already been deported, while the only Samians who were attracted by the offer were the oligarchs who had been driven into exile as a result of civil strife, following their decision to abandon the Ionians in their revolt shortly before the Battle of Lade (Hdt. 6.13, 19.3, 22–23).
    Their story has several twists. On its way to Sicily, the flotilla was intercepted by Anaxilaus, tyrant of Rhegium, who urged the Ionians to take possession of Zancle, which happened to be undefended at the time of their arrival. Before the Ionians could act upon this suggestion, however, the Zancleans learnt of Anaxilaus’s plot and rushed home, having first elicited military support from Hippocrates, the tyrant of Gela. Hippocrates, however, proved to be duplicitous. He took possession of Zancle, imprisoned its king, and gave the city to the Ionians. He did so on condition that the Ionians hand over half of all the urban slaves who were living in the city and all the agricultural slaves. In addition, he enslaved and deported most of the citizen population. However, when he transferred 300 of the most prominent Zancleans to the Ionians and urged them to slit their throats, the latter refused to do so. Herodotus clearly admired the Samians both for their resourcefulness and their compassion—he fails to mention the Milesians for some reason—and he ends by saying, “So this is how the Samians, having escaped from the Persians, acquired Zancle, the most beautiful city of all” (6.24.2).
    One other attempt at relocating all the Ionians occurred. After their victory over the Persians at the Battle of Mycale in 479 the Greeks held a conference to weigh the merits of permitting them to settle in the west. Evidently there was a strongly held opinion that it would be impossible to protect the Ionians in the long term and that one day the Persians would exact savage reprisals for their defeat. The Spartans and others recommended that the Ionians should be relocated in those port cities on the mainland that belonged to Greeks who had “medized,” viz sided with the Persians. The Athenians, however, vehemently opposed