Greek civilization and identity crystallized not when Greeks were close together but when they came to be far apart. It emerged during the Archaic period when Greeks founded coastal city states and trading stations in ever-widening horizons from the Ukraine to Spain. No center directed their diffusi[...]

This book discusses Greek attitudes to settlement and territory as articulated through myths and cults. The emphasis is less on the poetic, timeless qualities of the myths, than on their historical function in the archaic and Classical periods, covering the spectrum from explicit charter myths legit[...]