Trade was a fundamental aspect of the ancient Greek world and following territorial expansion, an increase in population movements, and innovations in transport, goods could be bought, sold, and exchanged in one part of the Mediterranean which had their origin in a completely different and far distant region. Food, raw materials, and manufactured goods were not only made available to Greeks for the first time but the export of such classics as wine, olives, and pottery helped to spread Greek culture to the wider world. In Greece and the wider Aegean, local, regional, and international trade exchange existed from Minoan and Mycenaean times in the Bronze Age. The presence, in particular, of pottery and precious goods such as gold, copper, and ivory, found far from their place of production, attests to the exchange network which existed between Egypt, Asia Minor, the Greek mainland, and islands such as Crete, Cyprus, and the Cyclades. Trade lessened and perhaps almost disappeared when these civilizations declined, and during the so-called Dark Ages from the 11th to 8th centuries BCE international trade in the Mediterranean was principally carried out by the Phoenicians.
The earliest written sources of Homer and Hesiod attest to the existence of trade (emporia) and merchants (emporoi) from the 8th century BCE, although they often present the activity as unsuitable for the ruling and landed aristocracy. Nevertheless, international trade grew from 750 BCE, and contacts spread across the Mediterranean driven by social and political factors such as population movements, colonisation (especially in Magna Graecia), inter-state alliances, the spread of coinage, the gradual standardisation of measurements, warfare, and safer seas following the determination to eradicate piracy.
