Smyrna, originally an Æolic colony, established from Kymê fell subsequently into the hands of the Ionians of Kolophôn. A party of exiles from the latter city, expelled during an intestine dispute, were admitted by the Smyrnæans into their city,—a favor which they repaid by shutting the gates and seizing the place for themselves, at a moment when the Smyrnæans had gone forth in a body to celebrate a religious festival. The other Æolic towns sent auxiliaries for the purpose of reëstablishing their dispossessed brethren; but they were compelled to submit to an accommodation, whereby the Ionians retained possession of the town, restoring to the prior inhabitants all their movables. These exiles were distributed as citizens among the other Æolic cities.[327]
Smyrna after this became wholly Ionian; and the inhabitants in later times, if we may judge by Aristeidês the rhetor, appear to have forgotten the Æolic origin of their town, though the fact is attested both by Herodotus and by Mimnermus.[328] At what time the change took place, we do not know; but Smyrna appears to have become Ionian before the celebration of the 23d Olympiad, when Onomastus the Smyrnæan gained the prize.[329] Nor have we information as to the period at which the city was received as a member into the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony, for the assertion of Vitruvius is obviously inadmissible, that it was admitted at the instance of Attalus, king of Pergamus, in place of a previous town called Melitê, excluded by the rest for misbehavior.[330] As little can we credit the statement of Strabo, that the city of Smyrna was destroyed by the Lydian kings, and that the inhabitants were compelled to live in dispersed villages until its restoration by Antigonus. A fragment of Pindar, which speaks of “the elegant city of the Smyrnæans,” indicates that it must have existed in his time.[331] The town of Eræ, near Lebedus, though seemingly autonomous,[332] was not among the contributors to the Pan-Ionian: Myonnêsus seems to have been a dependency of Teôs, as Pygela and Marathêsium were of Ephesus. Notium, after its recolonization by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, seems to have remained separate from and independent of Kolophôn: at least the two are noticed by Skylax as distinct towns.[333]
CHAPTER XIV.
ÆOLIC GREEKS IN ASIA.
On the coast of Asia Minor to the north of the twelve Ionic confederated cities, were situated the twelve Æolic cities, apparently united in a similar manner. Besides Smyrna, the fate of which has already been described, the eleven others were,—Têmnos, Larissa, Neon-Teichos, Kymê, Ægæ, Myrina, Gryneium, Killa, Notium, Ægiroëssa, Pitanê. These twelve are especially noted by Herodotus as the twelve ancient continental Æolic cities, and distinguished on the one hand from the insular Æolic Greeks, in Lesbos, Tenedos, and Hekatonnesoi,—and on the other hand from the Æolic establishments in and about Mount Ida, which seem to have been subsequently formed and derived from Lesbos and Kymê.[334]
Of these twelve Æolic towns, eleven were situated very near together, clustered round the Elæitic gulf: their territories, all of moderate extent, seem also to have been conterminous with each other. Smyrna, the twelfth, was situated to the south of Mount Sipylus, and at a greater distance from the remainder,—one reason why it was so soon lost to its primitive inhabitants. These towns occupied chiefly a narrow but fertile strip of territory lying between the base of the woody mountain-range called Sardênê and the sea.[335] Gryneium, like Kolophôn and Milêtus, possessed a venerated sanctuary of Apollo, of older date than the Æolic emigration. Larissa, Têmnos, and Ægæ were at some little distance from the sea: the first at a short distance north of the Hermus, by which its territory was watered and occasionally inundated, so as to render embankments necessary;[336] the last two upon rocky mountain-sites, so inaccessible to attack that the inhabitants were enabled, even during the height of the Persian power, to maintain constantly a substantial independence.[337] Elæa, situated at the mouth of the river Kaïkus, became in later times the port of the strong and flourishing city of Pergamus; while Pitana, the northernmost of the twelve, was placed between the mouth of the Kaïkus and the lofty promontory of Kanê, which closes in the Elæitic gulf to the northward. A small town Kanæ, close to that promontory is said to have once existed.[338]
It has already been stated that the legend ascribes the origin of these colonies to a certain special event called the Æolic emigration, of which chronologers profess to know the precise date, telling us how many years it happened after the Trojan war, considerably before the Ionic emigration.[339] That the Æolic as well as Ionic inhabitants of Asia were emigrants from Greece, we may reasonably believe, but as to the time or circumstances of their emigration we can pretend to no certain knowledge. The name of the town Larissa, and perhaps that of Magnêsia on Mount Sipylus (according to what has been observed in the preceding passage), has given rise to the supposition that the anterior inhabitants were Pelasgians, who, having once occupied the fertile banks of the Hermus, as well as those of the Kaïster near Ephesus, employed their industry in the work of embankment.[340] Kymê was the earliest as well as the most powerful of the twelve Æolic towns, Neon-Teichos having been originally established by the Kymæans as a fortress for the purpose of capturing the Pelasgic Larissa. Both Kymê and Larissa were designated by the epithet of Phrikônis: by some this was traced to the mountain Phrikium in Lokris, from whence it was alleged that the Æolic emigrants had started to cross the Ægean; by others it seems to have been connected with an eponymous hero Phrikôn.[341]
It was probably from Kymê and its sister cities on the Elæitic gulf that Hellenic inhabitants penetrated into the smaller towns in the inland plain of the Kaïkus,—Pergamus, Halisarna, Gambreion, etc.[342] In the more southerly plain of the Hermus, on the northern declivity of Mount Sipylus, was situated the city of Magnêsia, called Magnêsia ad Sipylum, in order to distinguish it from Magnêsia on the river Mæander. Both these towns called Magnêsia were inland,—the one bordering upon the Ionic Greeks, the other upon the Æolic, but seemingly not included in any amphiktyony either with the one or the other. Each is referred to a separate and early emigration either from the Magnêtes in Thessaly or from Krête. Like many other of the early towns, Magnêsia ad Sipylum appears to have been originally established higher up on the mountain,—in a situation nearer to Smyrna, from which it was separated by the Sipylene range,—and to have been subsequently brought down nearer to the plain on the north side as well as to the river Hermus. The original site, Palæ-Magnêsia,[343] was still occupied as a dependent township, even during the times of the Attalid and Seleukid kings. A like transfer of situation, from a height difficult of access to some lower and more convenient position, took place with other towns in and near this region; such as Gambreion and Skêpsis, which had their Palæ-Gambreion and Palæ-Skêpsis not far distant.
Of these twelve Æolic towns, it appears that all except Kymê were small and unimportant. Thucydidês, in recapitulating the dependent allies of Athens at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, does not account them worthy of being enumerated.[344] Nor are we authorized to conclude, because they bear the general name of Æolians, that the inhabitants were all of kindred race, though a large proportion of them are said to have been Bœotians, and the feeling of fraternity between Bœotians and Lesbians was maintained throughout the historical times; one etymology of the name is, indeed, founded upon the supposition that they were of miscellaneous origin.[345] We do not hear, moreover, of any considerable poets produced by the Æolic continental towns; in this respect Lesbos stood alone,—an island said to have been the earliest of all the Æolic settlements, anterior even to Kymê. Six towns were originally established in Lesbos,—Mitylêne, Mêthymna, Eresus, Pyrrha, Antissa, and Arisbê: the last-mentioned town was subsequently enslaved and destroyed by the Methymnæans, so that there remained only five towns in all.[346] According to the political subdivision usual in Greece, the island had thus, first six, afterwards five, independent governments, of which, however, Mitylênê, situated in the south-eastern quarter and facing the promontory of Kanê, was by far the first, while Mêthymna, on the north of the island over against Cape Lekton, was the second. Like so many other Grecian colonies, the original city of Mitylênê was founded upon an islet divided from Lesbos by a narrow strait; it was subsequently extended on to Lesbos itself, so that the harbor presented two distinct entrances.[347]
It appears that the native poets and fabulists who professed to deliver the archæology of Lesbos, dwelt less upon the Æolic settlers than upon the various heroes and tribes who were alleged to have had possession of the island anterior to that settlement, from the deluge of Deukalion downwards,—just as the Chian and Samian poets seem to have dwelt principally upon the ante-Ionic antiquities of their respective islands. After the Pelasgian Xanthus son of Triopas, comes Makar son of Krinakus, the great native hero of the island, supposed by Plehn to be the eponym of an occupying race called the Makares: the Homeric Hymn to Apollo brings Makar into connection with the Æolic inhabitants by calling him son of Æolus, and the native historian Myrsilus also seems to have treated him as an Æolian.[348] To dwell upon such narratives suited the disposition of the Greeks; but when we come to inquire for the history of Lesbos, we find ourselves destitute of any genuine materials, not only for the period prior to the Æolic occupation, but also for a long time after it: nor can we pretend to determine at what date that occupation took place. We may reasonably believe it to have occurred before 776 B. C., and it therefore becomes a part of the earliest manifestations of real Grecian history: both Kymê, with its eleven sister towns on the continent, and the islands Lesbos and Tenedos, were then Æolic; and I have already remarked that the migration of the father of Hesiod the poet, from the Æolic Kymê to Askra in Bœotia, is the earliest authentic fact known to us on contemporary testimony,—seemingly between 776 and 700 B. C.