Ionian Sea

“ Ionia has been always celebrated for the salubrity of the climate, the fruitfulness of the ground, and the genius of its inhabitants. Herodotus, bk. 1, chs. 6 & 28.—Strabo, bk. 14.—Mela, bk. 1, ch. 2, &c.—Pausanias, bk. 7, ch. 1.――An ancient name given to Hellas, or Achaia, because it was for some time the residence of the Ionians.
Iōnium mare, a part of the Mediterranean sea, at the bottom of the Adriatic, lying between Sicily and Greece. That part of the Ægean sea which lies on the coast of Ionia, in Asia, is called the sea of Ionia, and not the Ionian sea. ”

“ Greece, at the same time, does not share the disadvantage of Turkey, which is almost cut off from the western world by a mountain region difficult to cross. The Ionian Sea, to the west of the Peloponnesus, it is true, is, comparatively speaking, a desert; but farther north the Gulf of Corinth almost cuts in two the Greek peninsula, and the sight of the distant mountains of Italy, which are visible from the Ionian Islands, must have incited to an exploration of the western seas. ”

“ There is scarcely a single point "where, in clear weather, a mariner would feel himself left in a solitude between sky and water; the eye reaches from island to island, and easy voyages of a day lead from bay to bay." Greek towns, including very ancient places, were scattered along the western coast of Asia Minor, between the mountains and the shore. The Aegean was studded with Greek islands. These, together with the islands in the Ionian Sea, on the west, formed a part of Greek territory. ”

“ The seven Ionian Islands naturally fall into three divisions. Kythera (or Cerigo) in the far South; the centred group, consisting of Zante, Cephalonia, Ithake, and Levkas (or Santa Maura) ; and Corfù and Paxo in the North. Of these divisions, the first fell to the share of a scion of the great Venetian family of Venier—a family which traced its name and descent from Venus, and naturally claimed the island, where she had risen from the sea. Zante, Cephalonia and Ithake had a very curious history—a history long obscure, but now well ascertained. ”

“ It rises in Mt. Pindus, and, dividing Aetolia from Acarnania, falls into the Ionian Sea. In the lower part of its course the river winds through fertile, marshy plains. Its water is charged with fine mud, which is deposited along its banks and at its mouth, where a number of small islands (Echinades) have been formed. ”

“ A difference in the elements which were supplied in Greece itself.
Thus—admixture and alliance with the original population of Thessaly and South Macedon, rather than with that of Epirus may have determined the Æolian character; admixture and alliance with the South Epirotes rather than the Thessalians, the Doric; Semitic elements the Ionic. In the first and last instances, there may also have been a different starting-point from Italy; the Ionians being derived from the coast that gave its name to the Ionian Sea, the Æolians from the district to which Æolus was the eponymus. ”

“ And it is in Ionia that commercial development is earliest and greatest. In the most distant regions the Ionian is first in the field. Egypt and the Black Sea are both opened up to Greek trade by Miletus, the Adriatic and the Western Mediterranean by Phocaea and Samos. It is significant that of the twelve states engaged in the Egyptian trade in the 6th century all, with the exception of Aegina, are from the eastern side of the Aegean (Herod. ii. 178) . On the western side the chief centres of trade during these centuries were the islands of Euboea and Aegina and the town of Corinth. ”

“ Some sites in Asia Minor and the islands adjoining, such cities as Samos, Camirus in Rhodes, and the Ionian colonies on the Black Sea, have furnished us with a mass of ware of the Ionian class, but it seldom bears interesting subjects; it is essentially decorative. For Ionian ware which has closer relation to Greek mythology and history we must turn elsewhere. ”

“ In the story of the Ionian revolt he displays a most marked antipathy to the Ionians. He has hardly a good word to say of them in any department of life; their literary men are very inferior persons; their kinsmen across the sea were ashamed to claim connection with them ”

“ There may even have been in some ways a retrogression—a fading out of the Mycenaean culture, the admission of “Carian” elements needing gradual assimilation. That period is historically so much of a blank to us, that when we do begin to note the signs of expansion they give us the surprise of suddenness. Miletus is all at once the leading city of the Greek world. It plants colony after colony on the Dardanelles, in the Sea of Marmara, along the shores of the Euxine. Ionia is awake while Hellas is still asleep. Ionian traders, Ionian soldiers, Ionian ships are everywhere. ”

“ Thirdly, the poems in their main stages are Ionian, and Ionia was for many reasons calculated to lead the forward movement against the 'Urdummheit'. For one thing, Ionia reinforced the old Heroic tradition, in having much the same inward freedom. The Ionians are the descendants of those who fled from the invaders across the sea, leaving their homes, tribes, and tribal traditions. Wilamowitz has well remarked how the imagination of the Greek mainland is dominated by the gigantic sepulchres of unknown kings, which the fugitives to Asia had left behind them and half forgotten. ”

“ The dialect of the Ionians was distinguished from that of the Dorians and Æolians by clear and broad marks: the worship of the gods, which had a peculiarly joyful and serene cast among the Ionians, had been moulded into fixed national festivals [5] : and some steps towards the development of republican feeling had already been taken, before this separation occurred. The boundless resources and mobility of the Ionian spirit are shown by the astonishing productions of the Ionians in Asia and the islands in the two centuries previous to the Peisian war ”

“ In historic times it was applied to the inhabitants of (1) Attica, where some believed the Ionians to have originated; (2) parts of Euboea; (3) the Cycladic islands, except Melos and Thera; (4) a section of the west coast of Asia Minor, from the gulf of Smyrna to that of Iasus (see Ionia) ; (5) colonies from any of the foregoing, notably in Thrace, Propontis and Pontus in the west, and in Egypt (Naucratis, Daphnae) ; some authorities have found traces of an ancient Ionian population in (6) north-eastern Peloponnese. ”

“ From this time they passed under the dominion of the successive Macedonian rulers of Asia, but continued, with the exception of Miletus (q.v.) , to enjoy great prosperity both under these Greek dynasties and after they became part of the Roman province of Asia.
Ionia has laid the world under its debt not only by giving birth to a long roll of distinguished men of letters and science (see Ionian School of Philosophy) , but by originating the distinct school of art which prepared the way for the brilliant artistic development of Athens in the 5th century. ”

“ Rev. xv. 228) , though he regards the Ionian peoples as of European origin, thinks that they may have got their name from some part of the Asiatic coast. Ionian culture and art, though little known in their earlier phases, derive their inspiration on the one side from those of the old Aegean (Minoan) civilization, on the other from the Oriental (mainly Assyrian) models which penetrated to the coast through the Hittite civilization of Asia Minor. ”

“ The cities called Ionian in historical times were twelve in number,—an arrangement copied as it was supposed from the constitution of the Ionian cities in Greece which had originally occupied the territory in the north of the Peloponnese subsequently held by the Achaeans. These were (from south to north) —Miletus, Myus, Priene, Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedus, Teos, Erythrae, Clazomenae and Phocaea, together with Samos and Chios. ”

“ They cultivated the ground, and protected their cities with walls. Remnants of their rude but massive masonry still encumber in places the soil of Greece.
THE HELLENES.—The Hellenes were divided into four tribes; namely, the Ionians, the Dorians, the Achæans, and the Æolians. The Ionians were a many-sided, imaginative people. They developed every part of their nature, and attained unsurpassed excellence in art, literature, and philosophy. The most noted Ionian city was Athens, whose story is a large part of the history of Hellas. ”

“ This, and some other considerations, have prompted the suggestion that the Ionians really came from Crete. But it seems more in accordance with the evidence to suppose that the main body of them came from Greece proper, where they had learned the “Mycenaean” culture, which was the gift of Crete. The calamitous Dorians wrecked that wonderful heritage, but for some time at least the settlers in their new “Ionian” home would remember how to fashion a pot fairly and chant their traditional lays. ”

“ After them the Greeks, a people living chiefly on the shores of the Hellespont and Ægean seas, with many islands in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Archipelagion Seas, besides their possessions in Asia Minor, and their commerce with the European Continent, obtained the next power by sea. We read indeed, that Minos, the famous Cretan sovereign and legislator, who lived two descents before the Trojan war, sent out shipping to free the Grecian seas of pirates ”

“ We begin to understand that the northern, the southern, and the western view really make up a system in which the lands and seas which we leave behind us have no share. And when we once find ourselves on the waters of the Corinthian gulf, we begin to feel ourselves in another world from the world of the eastern Hellas, the world of Athens and Sparta. In both of the great divisions of the inland sea, within and without the straits, in the gulf of Krissa and in the gulf of Patrai, we feel that we have left the Greece of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophôn behind us. ”

“ The Ionians, on the other hand, were open as the sea, and had as many moods. They were eminently susceptible to beauty in all its forms, to the charm of change and to novelty. They were ever ready to put any belief or institution to the test of discussion, and were governed as much by ideas as by sentiments. Keenness of intellect, taste in all matters of literature and art, grace in expression, and measure in everything distinguished them above all Greeks. ”

“ We will speak first of the temples and the sculpture of Ionia. The Ionians were a people far more susceptible than were the Dorians to oriental influences. The dress, the art, the luxury of western Asia attracted them with irresistible force. We may suspect, as Brunn has suggested, that Ionian artists worked in the great Assyrian and Persian palaces, and that the reliefs which adorn the walls of those palaces were in part their handiwork. Some of the great temples of Ionia have been excavated in recent years, notably those of Apollo at Miletus, of Hera at Samos, and of Artemis at Ephesus. ”

“ Only two gods are respectfully handled—Apollo, who, though an ally of Troy, is a figure genuinely divine; and Poseidon, who moves in a kind of rolling splendour. The reason is not far to seek: they are the real gods of the Ionian. The rest are, of course, gods; but they are 'other peoples' gods,' and our view of them depends a good deal on our view of their worshippers. Athena comes a good third to the two Ionians; in the Odyssey and K she outstrips them. Athens could manage so much, but not more: she could not make the Ionian poetry accept her stern goddess in her real grandeur ”

“ The completion of the port—the increased navy which the construction of the new harbour would induce—the fame already acquired by Athens in maritime warfare, encouraging attention to naval discipline and tactics—proffered a splendid opening to the ambition of a people at once enterprising and commercial. Themistocles hoped that the results of his policy would enable the Athenians to gain over their own offspring, the Ionian colonies, and by their means to deliver from the Persian yoke, and permanently attach to the Athenian interest, all the Asiatic Greeks. ”

“ The nine cities of Ionians, Dorians, and Æolians erected at their common expense a sacred edifice, which they called Hellenion. The Ionian cities were Chios, Teos, Phocea and Clazomenæ; the 259Dorian, Rhodes, Cnidos, Halicarnassos, and Phaselis; of the Æolian, Mitylene only. The Æginetans raised for their own use a temple to Zeus,—the Samians to Hera,—the Milesians to Apollo. [1514] At this time, however, Naucratis was the only harbour in Egypt; and as this was pretty generally known, ships making land anywhere else were naturally suspected of being pirates ”

“ The loveliness of nature on the Ionian shores, and in the isles that crown the Ægean deep, was soon embellished by the genius of art. Stately processions, hymns chanted in honor of the gods, graceful dances before the altars, statues, and shrines, assemblies for festal or solemn purposes in the open air under the soft sky of Ionia, or within the halls of princes and nobles—these fill up the moments of the new and dazzling existence which the excitable Hellenic race are invited here and now to enjoy. ”

“ The sacrifice was not without its compensations, as it relieved Britain from an annual outlay of £100,000, which had been the cost of administration.
The principal Ionian Islands are five in number, namely, Corfu (Corcyra) , Santa Mauro (Leucas) , Ithaca, Cephalonia (Cephallenia) , and Zanté (Zacynthus) . They represent a territory of more than 1000 square miles, with a population of about a quarter of a million, who are mainly dependent on shipping and on the trade in oil, wine, and currants. ”