CHAPTER XIII.
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.
That these cities, the great ornament of the Ionic name, were founded by emigrants from European Greece, there is no reason to doubt. How, or when, they were founded, we have no history to tell us; the legend, which has already been set forth in a preceding chapter, gives us a great event called the Ionic migration, referred by chronologists to one special year, one hundred and forty years after the Trojan war. This massive grouping belongs to the character of legend,—the Æolic and Ionic emigrations, as well as the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, are each invested with unity, and imprinted upon the imagination as the results of a single great impulse. But such is not the character of the historical colonies: when we come to relate the Italian and Sicilian emigrations, it will appear that each colony has its own separate nativity and causes of existence. In the case of the Ionic emigration, this large scale of legendary conception is more than usually conspicuous, since to that event is ascribed the foundation or repeopling both of the Cyclades and of the Asiatic Ionian cities.
Euripidês treats Ion,[288] the son of Kreusa by Apollo, as the planter of these latter cities: but the more current form of the legend assigns that honor to the sons of Kodrus, two of whom are especially named, corresponding to the two greatest of the ten continental Ionic cities: Androklus, as founder of Ephesus, Neileus of Milêtus. These two towns are both described as founded directly from Athens. The others seem rather to be separate settlements, neither consisting of Athenians, nor emanating from Athens, but adopting the characteristic Ionic festival of the Apaturia, and, in part at least, the Ionic tribes,—and receiving princes from the Kodrid families at Ephesus or Milêtus, as a condition of being admitted into the Pan-Ionic confederate festival. The poet Mimnermus ascribed the foundation of his native city Kolophôn to emigrants from Pylus, in Peloponnesus, under Andræmôn: Teôs was settled by Minyæ of Orchomenus, under Athamas: Klazomenæ by settlers from Kleônæ and Phlius, Phôkæa, by Phocians, Priênê in large portion by Kadmeians from Thebes. And with regard to the powerful islands of Chios and Samos, it does not appear that their native authors,—the Chian poet Ion, or the Samaian poet Asius,—ascribed to them a population emanating from Athens: Pausanias could not make out from the poems of Ion how it happened that Chios came to form a part of the Ionic federation.[289] Herodotus, especially, dwells upon the number of Grecian tribes and races, who contributed to supply the population of the twelve Ionic cities,—Minyæ, from Orchomenus, Kadmeians, Dryopians, Phocians, Molossians, Arkadian Pelasgians, Dorians from Epidaurus, and “several other sections” of Greeks. Moreover, he particularly singles out the Milesians, as claiming for themselves the truest Ionic blood, and as having started from the prytaneium, at Athens; thus plainly implying his belief that the majority, at least, of the remaining settlers did not take their departure from the same hearth.[290]
But the most striking information which Herodotus conveys to us is, the difference of language, or dialect, which marked these twelve cities. Milêtus, Myûs, and Priênê, all situated on the soil of the Karians, had one dialect: Ephesus, Kolophôn, Lebedus, Teôs, Klazomenæ, and Phôkæa, had a dialect common to all, but distinct from that of the three preceding: Chios and Erythræ exhibited a third dialect, and Samos, by itself, a fourth. Nor does the historian content himself with simply noting such quadruple variety of speech; he employs very strong terms to express the degree of dissimilarity.[291] The testimony of Herodotus as to these dialects is, of course, indisputable.
Instead of one great Ionic emigration, then, the statements above cited conduct us rather to the supposition of many separate and successive settlements, formed by the Greeks of different sections, mingling with and modified by preëxisting Lydians and Karians, and subsequently allying themselves with Milêtus and Ephesus into the so-called Ionic amphiktyony. As a condition of this union, they are induced to adopt among their chiefs princes of the Kodrid gens or family; who are called sons of Kodrus, but who are not for that reason to be supposed necessarily contemporary with Androklus or Neileus.
The chiefs selected by some of the cities are said to have been Lykians,[292] of the heroic family of Glaukus and Bellerophon: in some causes, the Kodrids and the Glaukids were chiefs conjointly. Respecting the dates of these separate settlements, we cannot give any account, for they lie beyond the commencement of authentic history: there is ground for believing that most of them existed for some time previous to 776 B. C., but at what date the federative solemnity uniting the twelve cities was commenced, we do not know.
The account of Herodotus shows us that these colonies were composed of mixed sections of Greeks,—an important circumstance in estimating their character. Such was usually the case more or less in respect to all emigrations, and hence the establishments thus planted contracted at once, generally speaking, both more activity and more instability than was seen among those Greeks who remained at home, and among whom the old habitual routine had not been counterworked by any marked change of place or of social relations. For in a new colony it became necessary to adopt fresh classifications of the citizens, to range them together in fresh military and civil divisions, and to adopt new characteristic sacrifices and religious ceremonies as bonds of union among all the citizens conjointly. At the first outset of a colony, moreover, there were inevitable difficulties to be surmounted, which imposed upon its leading men the necessity of energy and forethought,—more especially in regard to maritime affairs, on which not only their connection with the countrymen whom they had left behind, but also their means of establishing advantageous relations with the population of the interior, depended. At the same time, the new arrangements indispensable among the colonists were far from working always harmoniously: dissension and partial secessions were not unfrequent occurrences. And what has been called the mobility of the Ionic race, as compared with the Doric, is to be ascribed in a great measure to this mixture of races and external stimulus arising out of expatriation: for there is no trace of it in Attica anterior to Solon; and on the other hand, the Doric colonies of Korkyra and Syracuse exhibit a population not less excitable than the Ionic towns generally,[293] and much more so than the Ionic colony of Massalia. The remarkable commercial enterprise, which will be seen to characterize Milêtus, Samos, and Phokæa, belongs but little to anything connected with the Ionic temperament.
All the Ionic towns, except Klazomenæ and Phokæa, are represented to have been founded on some preëxisting settlements of Karians, Lelegians, Kretans, Lydians, or Pelasgians.[294] In some cases these previous inhabitants were overcome, slain, or expelled; in others they were accepted as fellow-residents, and the Grecian cities thus established acquired a considerable tinge of Asiatic customs and feelings. What is related by Herodotus respecting the first establishment of Neileus and his emigrants at Milêtus is in this point of view remarkable. They took out with them no women from Athens (the historian says), but found wives in the Karian women of the place, whose husbands and fathers they overcame and put to death; and the women, thus violently seized, manifested their repugnance by taking a solemn oath among themselves that they would never eat with their new husbands, nor ever call them by their personal names. This same pledge they imposed upon their daughters; but how long the practice lasted, we are not informed: it rather seems from the language of the historian that traces of it were visible even in his day in the family customs of the Milesians. The population of this greatest of the Ionic towns must thus have been half of Karian breed. It is to be presumed that what is true of Neileus and his companions would be found true, also, respecting most of the maritime colonies of Greece, and that the vessels which took them out would be scantily provided with women. But on this point, unfortunately, we are left without information.
The worship of Apollo Didymæus, at Branchidæ, near Milêtus,—that of Artemis, near Ephesus,—and that of the Apollo Klarius, near Kolophôn,—seems to have existed among the native Asiatic population before the establishment of either of these three cities. To maintain these preëxisting local rites was not less congenial to the feelings, than beneficial to the interests, of the Greeks: all the three establishments acquired increased celebrity under Ionic administration, and contributed in their turn to the prosperity of the towns to which they were attached. Milêtus, Myûs, and Priênê were situated on or near the productive plain of the river Mæander; while Ephesus was, in like manner, planted near the mouth of the Kaïster, thus immediately communicating with the productive breadth of land separating Mount Tmôlus on the north from Mount Messôgis on the south, through which that river runs: Kolophôn is only a very few miles north of the same river. Possessing the best means of communication with the interior, these three towns seem to have thriven with greater rapidity than the rest; and they, together with the neighboring island of Samos, constituted in early times the strength of the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony. The situation of the sacred precinct of Poseidôn (where this festival was celebrated), on the north side of the promontory of Mykalê, near Priênê, and between Ephesus and Milêtus, seems to show that these towns formed the primitive centre to which the other Ionian settlements became gradually aggregated. For it was by no means a centrical site with reference to all the twelve; so that Thalês of Milêtus,—who at a subsequent period recommended a more intimate political union between the twelve Ionic towns, and the establishment of a common government to manage their collective affairs,—indicated Teôs,[295] and not Priênê, as the suitable place for it. Moreover, it seems that the Pan-Ionic festival,[296] though still formally continued, had lost its importance before the time of Thucydidês, and had become practically superseded by the more splendid festival of the Ephesia, near Ephesus, where the cities of Ionia found a more attractive place of meeting.