Le renouveau identitaire des colonies grecques à l’époque impériale : Ioniens et Doriens dans le Pont-Euxin

Two leading mother-cities are obvious during the colonization of the Black Sea : Miletus, or more generally Ionia, and Megara, with a Boiotian participation. Although the ancient colonies forge a specific history in contact with their Greek and native milieu, the past, and first of all the memory of the colonization, play a central rôle in asserting their identity. The permanence of the traditions about the foundations, renewed during the Imperial period, at first sight maybe astonishing, is easily explainable in this period where the Greeks of the Empire are making of the claim of their roots an identitary tool