It is not clear how much the Greeks thought about Massalia at all. Aristotle and his Lyceum students included a constitution of the city in their collection of such writings, 158 in all, which unfortunately does not survive. Herodotos, Aristotle, and some others mention or elaborate on the foundation myth of the city, but add more confusion that information. The Classical Greek city-states familiar to us certainly knew of the existence of Massilia, but it was so far away that it played virtually no part in the troubles of the Greeks with Persians, and then with themselves, in the late 6th to late 5th century. The city seems to have been ruled by a narrow-to-medium-sized oligarchy, renowned for its stability and avoidance of stasis (revolution, political upheaval). There was an oligarchic council made up of the most influential citizens, and a more narrow executive committee (possibly of three, perhaps on the model of a Roman tresviri).

The Massilians undeniably thought of themselves as Greeks, despite inevitable blending with the enigmatic local population of "Ligurians" (probably Celts), and in support of that notion they built a dainty little treasury to represent their Greek polis and show off their considerable wealth at Delphi. There was almost certainly something similar at Olympia. In that way, the Massiliote aristocrats participated in the pan-Hellenic elite milieu. Their attentions were otherwise firmly fixed on the West, where the city was the prime center for communication and trade between the Greco-Etrusco-Punic Mediterranean and the Celtic and Celt-Iberian interiors of Spain and France. Massilia, along with its "daughter" cities and a scattering of other Phocaean settlements, dominated the economic identity of the Golfe du Lyon, and it was via their markets that Greek, Etruscan, Carthaginian, and later Roman goods flowed into Celtic France.