If attainable, verify the text with references supplied in the foreign-language article. The traditional Greek homelands have been the Greek peninsula and the Aegean Sea, Southern Italy , the Black Sea, the Ionian coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of Cyprus and Sicily. In Plato’s Phaidon, Socrates remarks, “we stay round a sea like frogs around a pond” when describing to his pals the Greek cities of the Aegean.