Founding myth of Marseille

rdf:langString Founding myth of Marseille

rdf:langString . Ab Urbe Condita Libri, 5.34.

rdf:langString , XIII, fr. 549 Rose = Aristotle "Constitution of the Massaliotes".

rdf:langString Justin XLIII, 3 = Pompeius Trogus. Philippic Histories .

rdf:langString The Phocaeans who inhabit Ionia were traders and founded Massalia. Euxenus of Phocaea was a guest-friend of King Nanos—which was actually his name. Euxenus happened to be visiting when this Nanos was celebrating his daughter’s wedding, and he was invited to the feast. The wedding was organized as follows: After the meal, the girl had to come in and offer a bowl full of wine mixed with water to whichever suitor there she wanted, and whoever she gave it to would be her bridegroom. When the girl entered the room, she gave the bowl, either by accident or for some other reason, to Euxenus; her name was Petta. After this happened, and her father decided that the gift had been made in accord with the god’s will, so that he ought to have her, Euxenus married and set up housekeeping with her, although he changed her name to Aristoxene. There is still a family in Massalia today descended from her and known as the Protiadae; because Protis was the son of Euxenus and Aristoxene.

rdf:langString While [the Gauls] were there fenced in as it were by the lofty mountains, and were looking about to discover where they might cross, over heights that reached the sky, into another world, superstition also held them back, because it had been reported to them that some strangers seeking lands were beset by the Salui. These were the Massilians, who had come in ships from Phocaea. The Gauls, regarding this as a good omen of their own success, lent them assistance, so that they fortified, without opposition from the Salui, the spot which they had first seized after landing....

rdf:langString In the time of King Tarquin a party of young Phocaean warriors, sailing to the mouth of the Tiber, entered into an alliance with the Romans. From there, sailing into the distant bays of Gaul, they founded Massilia among the Ligurians and the fierce tribes of the Gauls; and they did mighty deeds, whether in protecting themselves against the savagery of the Gauls or in provoking them to fight—having themselves first been provoked. For the Phocaeans were forced by the meanness and poverty of their soil to pay more attention to the sea than to the land: they eked out an existence by fishing, by trading, and largely by piracy, which in those days was reckoned honourable. So they dared to sail to the furthest shore of the ocean and came to the Gallic gulf, by the mouth of the Rhone. Taken by the pleasantness of the place, they returned home to report what they had seen and enlisted the support of more people. The commanders of the fleet were Simos and Protis. So they came and sought the friendship of the king of the Segobrigii, by name Nannus, in whose territory they desired to found a city. It so happened that on that day the king was engaged in arranging the marriage of his daughter Gyptis: in accordance with the custom of the tribe, he was preparing to give her to be married to a son-in-law chosen at a banquet. So since all the suitors had been invited to the wedding, the Greek guests too were asked to the feast. Then the girl was brought in, and when she was asked by her father to offer water to the man she chose as her husband, she passed them all over and, turning to the Greeks, gave the water to Protis; and he, thus changed from a guest into a son-in-law, was given the site for founding the city by his father-in-law. So Massilia was founded near the mouths of the river Rhone, in a deep inlet, as it were in a corner of the sea.

rdf:langString The founding myth of Marseille is an ancient creation myth telling the legendary foundation of the colony of Massalia (modern Marseille), on the Mediterranean coast of what was later known as southern Gaul, by Greek settlers from Phocaea, a city in western Anatolia. Although the attested versions differ on some details, they all recount the story of the marriage of the princess Gyptis (or Petta), the daughter of Nannus, chief of the native Segobrigii, to the Phocaean sailor Protis (or Euxenus). On her wedding day, the princess chooses to marry the foreigner by giving him a bowl filled with wine or water during the feast. Only two extensive sources have survived: the story recounted by Aristotle in "The Constitution of the Massaliotes", which is reproduced in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae, and the version told by Gallo-Roman historian Pompeius Trogus in his Philippic Histories, now lost but later summarized by the Roman historian Justin. The Roman historian Livy also alludes to the myth in his Ab Urbe Condita. The motif of the princess choosing her future husband in a group of suitors during her wedding is found in other Indo-European myths, notably in the ancient Indian svayamvara tales and in Chares of Mytilene's "Stories about Alexander". The background of the Phocaean version was probably influenced by the actual founding of the colony of Massalia around 600 BC by Greek settlers from the Ionian city of Phocaea, although earlier prototypes may have existed already in Phocaea. The modern inhabitants of Marseille are still colloquially called the 'Phocaeans' (French: Phocéens).