This famous dialogue in the Phaedo illustrates a common idea: the Mediterranean was settled by Greeks “like frogs about a pond”. This is particularly the case for the Aegean, when the Greeks crossed the sea to settle on its eastern shore at the dawn of the first millennium BCE. But archaeology tells a much more complex story. This lecture will show that the Aegean was not merely a pond around which the Greeks lived. Emphasis will be on the Carians of Anatolia, another ‘men of bronze’ population, whose history of interactions and engagements with the Greeks is long and complex.
