Expert: Maria - 3/8/2004

Question
Could you tell me please who was an ancient Greek person called KOLAIOS?
Thanks in advance for your time.

Answer
Hello Maurizio,

According to Herodotus, one of the most important Greek historians flourished in the 5th. century BC, KOLAIOS of SAMOS (late century 7th.BC),was a Greek shipmaster, merchant and adventurer who reached Tartessos, that by the literary sources meant a city, a river, and a region two sailing days distant from the port Gades (today Cádiz), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, on the western coast of Southern Spain.

At that time Tartessos(or, Tartessus) was an important trading centre, the point of export for copper and silver ore from central Spain.

Herodotus, according to Kolaios was the first Greek in Iberia, has left an account of this voyage in his Histories, Book 4, chapter 152, where he tells that around 630 BC Kolaios got in a storm on a voyage from the Greek island of Samos to Egypt.
He eventually reached the islet of Platea, off the coast of modern Libya, and then he was blown by easterly gales all across the Mediterranean to the Pillars of Herakles (the Greek name for the Straits of Gibraltar).
From there, he coasted around the south-western tip of the Iberian Peninsula until he reached Tartessos during the reign of Arganthonius and made here a profitable trade.

Therefore Kolaios was the first Greek to reach the Atlantic Ocean and then he is considered one of the great navigators of antiquity.
Moreover with this eventful voyage Kolaios brought the Atlantic Ocean within the ambit of Greek history and opened the Western Mediterranean to Greek civilisation and colonisation.
Later, Phocaean sailors would have created permanent commercial ties between Gades and the Aegean.

Nothing else we know about him.

Have a nice day.
Maria