It's the ancient's on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's

podcast where we are talking about the oldest city in France. Today it's the

second largest city in that country and if you haven't guessed it already it's

the city of Marseille known to the ancient Greeks as Missalia because it was at

the end of the seventh century BC or the very start of the sixth century BC that

Greek colonists came to southern France and founded this city. Now Missalia it's

got an awesome ancient history. You've got Carthaginians, you've got Hannibal

Barker crossing the river Rome nearby, you've got Romans, you've got other Western

Mediterranean Greek city-states, you've got Gauls, you've got trading with as

far away as Brittany with southern Britain with perhaps even northern Britain and

you've got explorers like Pithias who circumnavicated the British Isles hundreds

of years before the Romans arrived on that distant island. So Missalia has got

some remarkable ancient history. We can't cover it all in one podcast but in

today's pod we're going to be focusing in on Missalia's earlier ancient

history. We're going to be looking at it's founding and we're going to be looking

at what happens in the aftermath of that and to talk through this I was delighted

to get back on the podcast Dr Joshua Hall from the ancient world magazine.

Josh has been on the podcast quite recently you might remember a chat all

about the Battle of Hymara and the first Sicilian war in the early fifth

century BC and now Joshis back to talk about Missalia. He's our Western

Mediterranean Greek specialist so that further ado here's Josh.

Josh thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for inviting me. Now we're

...