May
18
/ 2018
About 600 years BC, Greek merchants sailed west the length of the Mediterranean Sea and founded a city named Massilia. Now it's called Marseilles, France. The purpose of the new port was to control commerce by means of the Rhone river into the interior of western Europe. It would have been easier, of course, to conduct such trade by sailing through the Strait of Hercules, now called Gibraltar, and then up the Atlantic coast.
