Ionians

IONIANS. This name was used in classical times for one of the four divisions of the Greek world, the remaining three being Aeolic, Doric and Arcado-Cypriote or Achaean. This is strictly a linguistic division, and the Greeks did not recognize it in an exact sense. Aeolian, Dorian and Ionian were well-marked divisions socially as well as linguistically. There was also a strong race antipathy between Dorian and Ionian, manifested particularly in the Peloponnesian War, in which Athens and Sparta were the protagonists. Each was inclined to regard the other as not fully Hellenic. The Ionians claimed that the Dorians were the descend ants of non-Greek northern invaders commingled with an earlier Greek population of the Peloponnese. The Dorians asserted that the Ionians were pre-Greek or Pelasgian, standing much in the same relationship to true Greeks as do the Welsh and other Britons to the Anglo-Saxons.

Attica was the centre of Ionic culture on the mainland. Euboea and the Cyclades were also regarded as Ionic with the exception of the Dorian islands of Melos and Thera, but the name Ionia itself in classical times was confined to the tract of land on the coast of Asia Minor that contained the Ionic cities. This lay between Aeolis on the north and Doris on the south, and extended from Smyrna to Miletus. The twelve cities, while retaining their independence in true Greek fashion, formed a league for social and religious purposes, their central cult being that of Poseidon car ried on upon Mt. Mycale. The Ionians claimed that this worship derived from Achaia in the Peloponnese, but it at least con tained elements that were Anatolian in origin. The Ionian cities were energetic, thriving and opulent. Their wealth made them luxurious and they had a name for effeminancy. They were sub dued by Croesus, king of Lydia, in the middle of the sixth cen tury and passed at his subjugation under the Persian empire. In 500 they revolted but were conquered by King Darius and a higher tribute was imposed upon them. After the successful ter mination of the Persian wars they were set free by the Greeks of the mainland under the leadership of Athens, but later fell again under Persia when that empire recovered its strength. They remained nominally subject to Persia till its overthrow by Alexander the Great. There were various Ionic colonies on the coast of the Euxine and in Sicily and Magna Graecia.

The chief characteristics of the Ionic dialect to which Attic was closely akin were: (i.) the representation of an original long a by for example in the word µsirs p for Doric, etc., marrip, Lat. mater; (ii.) the lengthening of the vowel before a nasal or liquid that preceded a lost digamma, e.g., Kobpn for Attic ivos, K6pn; (iii.) the nom. plur. of the personal pronouns in -as in stead of -es, e.g., 7),uas for Doric ap.es; (iv.) the termination -ou for pronominal adverbs of place (iron, etc.) for West Greek -EL; the third person plural of certain aorist forms in (E gbocrav) by analogy from an s-aorist ; (v.) the very early loss of digamma, etc. Ionic-Attic with Aeolic formed loosely an eastern

group of dialects as opposed to Doric and North-West Greek. The turning of the original dialect of the Homeric poems, Aeolic or otherwise, into Ionic where possible, i.e., where the exigencies of the metre, vocabulary, and other considerations permit, pro duced the artificial Epic dialect.

The name Ionians had probably a more extensive use

in early times than in historical. In the Pentateuch, in the 15th or 16th century B.C. (Gen. x. 2), Javan appears as a son of Japheth. To the Hebrews the name represented the whole Greek race. To the Persians the Greeks were known as Yauna. It does not follow from this fact that the Greeks knew themselves by this name, for the case may be parallel to the Italians and Illyrians later applying to them the name of Graeci, that of the small Epirote tribe with whom they first came in contact. In view of the name of the Ionian sea, which was ancient, it is possible that the mainland of Greece was once known as Ionia or its inhabitants as Ionians. No Ionian Greeks lived in historical times on the shores of the Ionian sea.

The Homeric Ionians were inhabitants of Attica (Il. xiii. 685). In the Hesiodic genealogies Ion was son of Xuthus and brother of Achaeus. According to Herodotus the original home of the Ionians was in north-east Peloponnese in the region around Troezen. Hence they were expelled by the Achaeans and occupied Attica, from which they later spread to the Cyclades and to Asia Minor. This traditional history of the Ionians is feasible and need not be dogmatically contradicted. We may perhaps regard the Ionians as pre-Achaean inhabitants of the Peloponnese dis turbed by Achaean invaders from the eastern Aegean. This is the view of Kretschmer and of N. P. Nilsson, except that they bring the Achaeans as a second wave of Greek-speaking peoples from the north. Nilsson regards the Ionians as the foremost wave of Greek-speaking peoples to reach Greece and as the originators of the Mycenaean culture. Later came the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese, consisting perhaps of two coincident elements, an irruption of Illyrian and Epirote tribes from the north-west and an invasion by sea from Crete. The Ionians when they emerge into history are a recognized integral part of the Greek world, dis tinguished like the Dorians by a well-marked dialect and a com mon cult. (See DORIANS ACHAEANS : GREECE : History.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-BuSOleS, Bury's and other Greek Histories. Kretsch mer lonier and Achaeer, in Glotta I. 9 ff. (19°9) ; D. Hogarth: Ionia and the East (19o9) Article Tones in Pauly's Real-Encyclop. d. klass. Altertumwissenschaft IX. ; N. P. Nilsson, Minoan Mycenean Religion (Introduction) (1927). For the dialect see C. D. Buck, Introduction to the Study of Greek Dialects (Iwo) and The Language Situation in and about Greece in the second Millennium B.C. in Class. Phil.