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. This school flourished in the 8th, 7th and 6th centuries, and is distinguished by the fineness of workmanship and minuteness of detail with which it treated subjects, inspired always to some extent by non-Greek models. Naturalism is progressively obvious in its treatment, e.g. of the human figure, but to the end it is still subservient to convention. It has been thought that the Ionian migration from Greece carried with it some part of a population which retained the artistic traditions of the “Mycenaean” civilization, and so caused the birth of the Ionic school; but whether this was so or not, it is certain that from the 8th century onwards we find the true spirit of Hellenic art, stimulated by commercial intercourse with eastern civilizations, working out its development chiefly in Ionia and its neighbouring isles. The great names of this school are Theodorus and Rhoecus of Samos; Bathycles of Magnesia on the Maeander; Glaucus, Melas, Micciades, Archermus, Bupalus and Athenis of Chios. Notable works of the school still extant are the famous archaic female statues found on the Athenian Acropolis in 1885-1887, the seated statues of Branchidae, the Nikē of Archermus found at Delos, and the objects in ivory and electrum found by D. G. Hogarth in the lower strata of the Artemision at Ephesus in 1904-1905 (see [Greek Art]).
Bibliography.—Beside general authorities under [Asia Minor] see especially F. Beaufort, Ionian Antiquities (1811); R. Chandler, &c., Ionian Antiquities (1769 ff.); Histories of Greek Sculpture by A. S. Murray, M. Collignon and E. A. Gardner, and special works cited under particular cities; E. Curtius, Die Ionier vor der ionischen Wanderung (1855); D. G. Hogarth, Ionia and the East (1909), with map.
(E. H. B.; D. G. H.)
IONIA, a city and the county-seat of Ionia county, Michigan, U.S.A., on the Grand river, about 34 m. E. of Grand Rapids. Pop. (1904) 5222; (1910) 5030. It is served by the Grand Trunk and the Père Marquette railways. The greater part of the city is built on the bottom-lands of the valley within an area 2 m. in length and 1 m. in width, but some of the finest residences stand on the hills, which form an irregular semicircle behind the city, and command extensive views of the valley. Much of the building material is a brown sandstone obtained from quarries only 3 m. distant; white clay, also, is found in the vicinity. The city is a trade centre for a rich farming district, has car-shops (of the Père Marquette railway) and iron foundries, and manufactures wagons, pottery, furniture and clothing. The waterworks are owned and operated by the municipality. Ionia was settled in 1833 by immigrants from German Flats, near Herkimer, New York. It was incorporated as a village in 1857, but the charter was allowed to lapse; it was again incorporated as a village in 1865, and was chartered as a city in 1873.
IONIAN ISLANDS, the collective name for the Greek islands of Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Santa Maura, Ithaca, Cythera (Cerigo) and Paxo, with their minor dependencies. These seven islands (for details of which see their separate headings) are often described also as the Heptanesus (“Seven Islands”), but they have no real geographical unity. The history of the name “Ionian” in this connexion is obscure, but it is probably due to ancient settlements of Ionian colonists on the coasts and islands. The political unity of the seven islands is of comparatively modern date; their independence as a separate state lasted only seven years (1800-1807). To a certain extent they have passed under the same succession of influences; they have been subjected to the same invasions, and have received accessions to their populations from the same currents of migration or conquest. But even what may be considered as common experiences have affected the individual islands in different ways; in the matter of population, for instance, Corfu has undergone much more important modifications than Ithaca.
The Ionian islands consist almost entirely of Cretaceous and Tertiary beds, but in Corfu Jurassic deposits belonging to various horizons have also been found. The oldest beds which have yet been recognized are shales and hornstones with Liassic fossils. These are overlaid conformably by a thick series of platy limestones, known as the Vigläs limestone, which appears to represent the rest of the Jurassic system and also the lower part of the Cretaceous. Then follows a mass of dolomite and unbedded limestones containing Hippurites and evidently of Upper Cretaceous age. The Eocene beds are folded with the Cretaceous, and in many places the two formations have not yet been separately distinguished. Both occasionally assume the form of Flysch. Miocene beds are found in Corfu and Zante, and Pliocene deposits cover much of the low-lying ground.
History.—The beginning of Heptanesian history may be said to date from the 9th century. Leo the Philosopher (about A.D. 890) formed all or most of the islands into a distinct province under the title of the Thema of Cephallenia, and in this condition they belonged to the Eastern empire after Italy had been divided into various states, but this political or administrative unity could not last long in the case of islands exposed by their situation to opposite currents of conquest. Robert Guiscard, having captured Corfu (1081) and Cephalonia, might have become the founder of a Norman dynasty in the islands but for his early death at Cassopo. Amid the struggles between Greek emperors and Western crusaders during the 12th century, Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, &c., emerge from time to time; but it was not till the Latin empire was established at Constantinople in 1204 that the Venetians, who were destined to give the Ionian Islands their place in history, obtained possession of Corfu. They were afterwards robbed of the island by Leon Vetrano, a famous Genoese corsair; but he was soon defeated and put to death, and the senate, to secure their position, granted fiefs in Corfu to ten noble families in order that they might colonize it (1206). The conquest of Cephalonia and Zante followed, and we find five counts of the family of Tocco holding Cephalonia, and probably Zante as well as Santa Maura, as tributary to the republic. But the footing thus gained by the Venetians was not maintained, and through the closing part of the 13th and most of the 14th century the islands were a prey by turns to corsairs and to Greek and Neapolitan claimants. In 1386, however, the people of Corfu made voluntary submission to the Venetian republic which had now risen to be the first maritime power in the Mediterranean. In 1485 Zante was purchased from the Turks in a very depopulated condition; and in 1499 Cephalonia was captured from the same masters; but Santa Maura, though frequently occupied for a time, was not finally attached to Venice till 1684, and Cerigo was not taken till 1717.
The Venetians, who exacted heavy contributions from the islands, won the adherence of the principal native families by the bestowal of titles and appointments; the Roman Catholic Church was established, and the Venetian and French rule. Italian and Greek races were largely assimilated by intermarriage; Greek ceased to be spoken except by the lower classes, which remained faithful to the Orthodox communion. On the fall of the Venetian republic in 1797 the treaty of Campo Formio, which gave Venice to Austria, annexed the Ionian Islands to France; but a Russo-Turkish force drove out the French at the close of 1798; and in the spring of 1799 Corfu capitulated. By treaty with the Porte in 1800, the emperor Paul erected the “Septinsular Republic,” but anarchy and confusion followed till a secret article in the treaty of Tilsit, in 1807, declared the Islands an integral part of the French empire. They were incorporated with the province of Illyria, and in this condition they remained till the decline of the French power. The British forces, under General Oswald, took Zante, Cephalonia and Cerigo in 1809, and Santa Maura in 1810; Colonel (afterwards Sir Richard) Church (q.v.), reduced Paxo in 1814; and after the abdication of Napoleon, Corfu, which had been well defended by General Donzelot, was, by order of Louis XVIII., surrendered to Sir James Campbell. By the treaty of Paris (9th November 1815) the contracting powers—Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia—agreed to place the “United States of the Ionian Islands” under the exclusive protection of Great Britain, and to give Austria the right of equal commercial advantage with the protecting country, a plan strongly approved by Count Capo d’Istria, the famous Corfiot noble who afterwards became president of the new republic of Greece.