That was instructive, thank you. I only strolled through Xenophon and Thucydides in translation (although I believe θάλασσα gets pronounced/transcribed thalassa

That was instructive, thank you. I only strolled through Xenophon and Thucydides in translation (although I believe θάλασσα gets pronounced/transcribed thalassa). My impression is that the ties to colonies were like family obligations, and there was not a grand imperial design to them. Even so, Sparta let Melos perish without help, and helped Syracuse with just one man, who did lead the defense against the incompetent Athenian attack well enough. I do not think that national unity and integrity of territory were part of the mindset back then. Alcibiades, for one, strolled back and forth to the hated Persians when out of favor. And it seems to me that colonies were planted either without consent in areas of tenuous control, or with the sort of permission a landlord might grant to a rentier likely to make a piece of empty land profitable.