Megaris (Megarid) was a small state in the northern and wider part of the Isthmus, north of Corinthia, west of Attica and northwest of the island of Salamis. Its geographical position made it of some importance as a land passage between the Peloponnese and Central Greece. Tradition records that it was occupied by the Dorians and that it was originally settled in five villages: Heraea, Piraea, Megara, Cynosura and Tripodiscus. It is probable that tensions with Corinth precipitated the synoecism of the villages into the polis of Megara, the combined populations being organised into the usual three tribes of Dymanes, Hylleis and Pamphyli.
Megara possessed two harbours: Pegae to the west on the Corinthian Gulf; and Nisaea to the east on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea. Utilising these two assets, Megara became a useful trading link between Greece and the west and east. The Megarians made their city a mercantile centre, specialising in woollen cloaks. During the mid-eighth century BC the Corinthians advanced into Megaris and seized the southwestern sector, including the two westernmost villages, Heraea and Piraea, and also the cult site of Perachora. The Megarians under the leadership of Orsippus (who won a race at Olympia) regained some border territory, but by the late eighth century BC Corinth had recaptured the area. To Megara, whose economy depended on sheep-raising and woollen manufacture, the loss of this territory was serious, and Corinth was threatening Megara’s western trade as well. As there was little hope that the Megarians, whose territory had been small to begin with, could regain the land they had lost, they were among the first of the Greeks to turn to colonisation.
Megarian colonies and sub-colonies include Megara Hyblaea (c.728 BC) in western Sicily and its colony Selinus (c.628 BC) in western Sicily; Chalcedon (c.676 BC) and Astacos (c.712 BC) on the Asian side of the Bosporus, Byzantium (c.660 BC) and Selymbria (7th century BC) on the European side; Heraclea Pontica (c.560 BC) and its colonies Mesembria (6th century BC), Callatis (late 6th century BC) and the Touric Chersonese (5th century BC) on the Black Sea coast.
The Thracian Bosporus was a rich fishing region in which tunny could be trapped as it migrated from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. It was also the strategic channel through which Black Sea grain had to pass on its way to Greece. As a result of their settlements the Megarians came to regard the Bosporus and the eastern end of the Propontis as their special reserve, but were unsuccessful when they tried to prevent the Samians from establishing a rival colony at Perinthus on the northern shore of the Propontis in c.601 BC.
Megarian demes drove out their aristocratic government and handed power to the tyrant Theogenes (r.c.640-c.620 BC), who had obtained a bodyguard and gained the trust of the poor ‘by slaughtering the livestock of the rich’. He endeared himself to the people by building a tunnelled water-conduit and a fountain house. In 632 BC he supported his son-in-law Cylon in his unsuccessful attempt to make himself tyrant of Athens. The Magarian aristocracy eventually succeeded in driving out Theogenes, ‘but after a short time’, according to Plutarch (c.46-c.120), was itself driven out by the demes.
The island of Salamis was the key to controlling the sea lanes in the Saronic Gulf around the Megarian and Athenian ports; and it seems that the occupation of the island meant the dominance of one state over the other. In historical times Salamis first belonged to Megara. During the time of Solon the island was much fought over by Megara and Athens. It finally passed to Athenian control with its capture by Pisistratus in the second half of the sixth century BC.
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