Ionians

“ 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 ”

“ To this the Ionians replied: "We were sent out by the common authority of the Ionians to guard the sea, and not to deliver our ships to the Cyprians and ourselves fight with the Persians on land. We therefore will endeavour to do good service in that place to which we were appointed; and ye must call to mind all the evils which ye suffered from the Medes, when ye were in slavery to them, and prove yourselves good men.". ”

“ When Dionysius saw the Ionians assembled at Ladê, willing, eager, full of talk and mutual encouragement, but untrained and taking no thought of discipline, or nautical practice, or coöperation in the hour of battle,—he saw the risk which they ran for want of these precautions, and strenuously remonstrated with them: “Our fate hangs on the razor’s edge, men of Ionia: either to be freemen or slaves,—and slaves too, caught after running away. Set yourself at once to work and duty,—you will then have trouble indeed at first, with certain victory and freedom afterwards. ”

“ The Ionians had from the beginning a superior natural endowment for literature and art; and when this most gifted race came into contact with the antique culture and boundless commercial wealth of Asia and Africa, the loveliest and most fragrant flowers of the intellect shot forth in every direction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Ionians have a most magnificent country for the fruits of the earth, and temples such as there are nowhere else, the finest that of Ephesian Artemis for size and opulence, and next two to Apollo not quite finished, one at Branchidæ in Milesia, the other at Claros in Colophonia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Further, the old Greek literature has a striking completeness, due to the fact that each great branch of the Hellenic race bore a characteristic part in its development. Ionians, Aeolians, Dorians, in turn contributed their share. Each dialect corresponded to a certain aspect of Hellenic life and character. Each found its appropriate work.
The Ionians on the coast of Asia Minor—a lively and genial people, delighting in adventure, and keenly sensitive to everything bright and joyous—created artistic epic poetry out of the lays in which Aeolic minstrels sang of the old The dialects. ”

“ The Ionian cities thus conquered consisted of twelve states—three in Caria, seven in Lydia, and two islands. [1] Of these the most populous and powerful were Ephesus and Miletus, and the latter had made such a strenuous resistance to Croesus and his predecessors that it obtained specially favourable terms upon its submission. Though never politically powerful, the Ionians of Asia had been an adventurous, busy, and thriving mercantile people. ”

“ Of these Ionians then those of Miletos were sheltered from danger, since they had sworn an agreement; and those of them who lived in islands had no cause for fear, for the Phenicians were not yet subjects of the Persians and the Persians themselves were not sea-men. Now these 148 were parted off from the other Ionians for no other reason than this:—The whole Hellenic nation was at that time weak, but of all its races the Ionian was much the weakest and of least account: except Athens, indeed, it had no considerable city. ”

“ ASIATIC IONIANS. There existed at the commencement of historical Greece, in 776 B. C., besides the Ionians in Attica and the Cyclades, twelve Ionian cities of note on or near the coast of Asia Minor, besides a few others less important. Enumerated from south to north, they stand,—Milêtus, Myûs, Priênê, Samos, Ephesus, Kolophôn, Lebedus, Teôs, Erythræ, Chios, Klazomenæ, Phôkæa. ”

“ The ideal eponymous hero of the Ionian race was naturally feigned to be the son of the deity by whose fatherhood all Ionians became "brethren in Apollo." Once more, when a profession like that of medicine was in the hands of a clan conceiving themselves to be of one blood, and when their common business was under the protection of Apollo, they inevitably traced their genealogy to the god. ”

“ 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 ”

“ His seacoast subjects on the southern seaboard of the Corinthian gulf, originally "Pelasgians," but now called after him "Ionians," were thus in relations with Attica, and they migrated thither in a body, when they were driven from home by the Achaeans whom the Dorian invaders had expelled from their seats in the southern and western Peloponnese. The Ionians, so far, appear as a pre-Achaean people of the northern coast of Peloponnesus, Hellenic only through their Royal House, that of Ion; and later settled in Attica, among a people also pre-Hellenic in origin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The political situation of the worship of Apollo at Athens still requires to be noticed. From our previous observations it is clear that the Ionians had adopted it from the Dorians; hence Ion himself is called the son of the Pythian god. The paternal deity of Athens was, as Demosthenes says, no other than the Pythian Apollo.1052 We may then assert, without hesitation, that the Ionians were the only race who had gentilitious rites of Apollo, and that they alone could properly be called γενῆται Ἀπόλλωνος πατρῴου. ”

“ The colonies spread until a dodecapolis was established, similar to the union which the Ionians had founded in their old settlements on the northern shore of Peloponnesus. In some cities the Ionian population formed a minority. ... The colonisation of Ionia was undoubtedly, in the main, an achievement of emigrants from Attica, but it was not accomplished by a single family, or in the space of one life-time. ... The two most famous of the Ionian cities were Miletus and Ephesus. The first was a Carian city previously known as Anactoria. ”

“ No sooner had the Ionian revolt been brought to an end, and the Ionians punished for their daring, than the angry Oriental despot prepared to visit upon Athens the vengeance he had vowed. His preparations for this enterprise were great. His experience in Scythia had taught him that the Western barbarians—as he doubtless considered them—were not to be despised. For two years, in every part of his vast empire, the note of war was sounded, and men and munitions of war were actively gathered. ”

“ But when the message came to the Ionians in their cities, they fortified themselves severally with walls, and assembled in the Panionion, all except the Milesians, with whom alone Cyrus had made a treaty on the same terms as that which they had with the Lydians. The rest of the Ionians resolved to send envoys in the name of them all to Sparta, to ask help for the Ionians. ”

“ Though we are unable to check the statements of the historians as to the area occupied by Ionic in prehistoric times, it is clear from the legends of the close connexion between Athens and Troezen that the same dialect, had been spoken on both sides of the Saronic gulf, and may well have extended, as Herodotus says, along the eastern coast of the Peloponnese and the south side of the Corinthian gulf. According to legend, the Ionians expelled from the Peloponnese collected at Athens before they started on their migrations to the coast of Asia Minor. ”

“ ANAXIMENES TO PYTHAGORAS.
You are more prudent than we, in that you have migrated from Samos to Crotona, and live there in peace. For the descendants of Æacus commit unheard-of crimes, and tyrants never cease to oppress the Milesians. The king of the Medes too is formidable to us: unless, indeed, we choose to become tributary to him. But the Ionians are on the point of engaging in war with the Medes in the cause of universal freedom. For if we remain quiet there is no longer any hope of safety for us. ”

“ But the Ionians had no Achaean traditions to lose! They built walls to their new cities, and inside the wall a man "could take breath. He could become for a time a man again, instead of a frightened beast." A terrible picture is drawn of the sufferings and ferocious cruelties of the invaders, who, however, remain orthodox in religion after all, and confident in "the manifest help of Zeus and Apollo." ”

“ Little mention is made in the Homeric poems of the length of the χιτών, but the distinguishing epithet of the Ionians is ἑλκεχίτωνες—with trailing chitons—so that trailing garments were evidently customary only among the Ionians; warriors while fighting and slaves occupied in active work would probably wear very short garments reaching only to the thigh, as they are to be seen on the earliest vase-paintings. The princes and elders of the people, engaged in peaceful pursuits, in all probability wore them reaching to the ankles. ”

“ All the poets from whose works extracts have been given, with the exception of Tyrtaeus, were Ionians. But in the perfection of lyric poetry the Ionians have no place, and the Aeolians and Dorians hold the lead side by side. ”

“ In the swiftest of the Athenian vessels Themistocles therefore repaired to a watering-place on the coast, and engraved upon the rocks these words, which were read by the Ionians the next day.
“Men of Ionia, in fighting against your ancestors, and assisting to enslave Greece, you act unworthily. Come over to us; or if that may not be, at least retire from the contest, and prevail on the Carians to do the same. If yet neither secession nor revolt be practicable, at least when we come to action exert not yourselves against us. ”

“ And the {238} tyrants of the Ionians sent each by night to his own countrymen, to make known the warning. But the Ionians to whom these messages came, continued firm to their purpose and would not listen to treachery; for each thought that the Persians had sent this message.
When the Ionians had assembled at Lade, a council was held, and the Phocæan general Dionysius spoke as follows: "Our affairs are in a critical [22] state, O Ionians; we are to be freemen or slaves, and that too run-away slaves. ”

“ Ionians. Zeus and Apollo were called ‘ancestral’ at Athens because they were ancestral; the new element traced its descent from them, and presumably the affiliation was arranged by Delphi; but Apollo, though his sanctuary was on the hill, never got inside.
Ion had for divine father Apollo, but his real human father was Xuthos. ”

“ Apart from the facts which Herodotus himself gives tending to an opposite conclusion, the previous history of this branch of the Greek race, and especially of the Ionian section of it, tends in every way to deductions which are irreconcilable with the views of the historian. These Ionians were the descendants of men who had been conspicuous for ages as the boldest navigators of their time; who had planted colonies in almost every part of the Mediterranean, making voyages to lands previously unknown to the Greek, undeterred by the partly fabulous, partly real, perils of such enterprises. ”

“ 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. ”