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Ionian city of the coast of Lydia in Asia Minor (area 7).
Phocæa was part of the Ionian Confederacy, the Paniones, grouping cities founded in Asia Minor by Ionians fleeing what was to become Achaia, in northern Peloponnese, where they had earlier settled along the southern coast of the gulf of Corinth west of Sicyon, when the area was conquered by Achæans that gave it their name (Herodotus' Histories, I, 142-148).
Phocæa was very active in establishing colonies in various parts of the Mediterranean during the VIIth and VIth centuries B. C., as far as France (Massalia, now Marseille), Corsica (Alalie) and Spain (Tartessus, past the straight of Gibraltar, in the Cadiz area, where the Phoenicians had already established a trading post as early as the XIIth century, B. C., a city called Tarshish, mentioned in the Bible, I Kings, 10, 22). Herodotus (Histories, I, 163-167) credit them for being the first Greeks to make long travels at sea and for discovering the Adriatic Sea, northern Italy (Tyrrhenia) and Spain, and tells how they fled to Cyrnus (Corsica) when Harpagus, a general of Cyrus the Great, took their city in 545B. C., as part of his conquest of Ionia (they may also have founded Massalia on that same occasion). They later moved to Reggio in southern Italy after a naval battle against the Carthaginians and Etruscans (called Tyrrhenians by Herodotus).