IONIAN SEA, that part of the Mediter ranean Sea communicating with the Adriatic Sea or Gulf of Venice by the Strait of Otranto, and having Greece and part of, Albania on the east, Sicily and part of southern Italy on the west. This sea, divided from the Adriatic Sea by a submarine ridge rising in the Strait of Otranto, has a shoal or submarine ridge, already referred to by Stroh°, which joins Sicily and Tunis, as the true geological boundary of its basin on the west. Over this shoal the waters of the Mediterranean do not rise much more than 100 fathoms, a narrow flood connecting two divisions of the main sea. Its greatest breadth is between Cape Passero in Sicily and Cape Matapan in the Morea, which is about 400 miles. This waste of water washes all the shores of the Ionian Islands excepting those of Cerigo. From the more elevated spots in one of these historic islands the prospects are magnificent. From the high places in Corfu the view takes in two seas, and in clear weather one may discover the faint line of the Italian coast, near the city of Otranto, more than 70 miles away.
Dry cold winds passing over the snows upon the Albanian hills and those of Greece impart to the islands and the surrounding Ionian Sea a chill more piercing-cold than is common even in regions more to the north. The sirocco of southeast wind blows over the sea and its isles during 126% days annually.
The deepest points in the whole stretch of the Mediterranean waters have been found to lie beneath the surface of the Ionian Sea. Near its centre, say about 36° N. and 18° W. of Greenwich, soundings reveal 2,170 fathoms of water. Then due south of the land of the Morea there is an abrupt fall, in about 36° N. and the greatest depth beneath the surface of the whole watery surface of the Mediterranean is found to lie. The Gulf of Taranto and Sqnillace, wash ing the shores of Italy, and the Gulf of Arta, Patros and Arcadia on the coasts of Greece, are among the more important of the Ionian Sea. And the Gulf of Patros is con netted with the waters of the historic Gulf of Lepanto. The ebb and flow of tides so marked at Venice are on the whole little perceptible on the shores of the Ionian Sea. In some places it does not rise an inch.
The origin of the Roman designation, Ionium Mare, is very doubtful. The term is found first in the works of the poet 2Eschylus, who died 456 B.C., though exactly what meaning he attaches to it cannot be clearly ascertained. By this poet, and the ancients generally, the name is usually derived from the tsore-wasting" wanderings of Io, daughter of Inarchus, the river-god of Argos, and its first king. But it is
more probable that the sea obtained its name from the Ionian colonies which settled the island of Cephallenia in the Ionian Sea, along with other•islands off the coasts of Greece in the same locality. According to Theopompus, Strabo tells us, the name itself was derived from an ancient chieftain's name, lonius, a native of ancient Issa, now Lissa, a small island in the Adriatic Sea. Pliny, Mela and Tacitus use the words lonium Mare. Ptolemy, /ovay reaayac ; Ovid, lonium Aquor; Horace, lonium Sinus,— all words equivalent to Ionian Sea. Herodotus, born 484 n.c, and Thucydides, born 471 B.C., both talk of the Ionian Gulf, which as they describe it can only mean the Adriatic Sea of to-day. Strabo, born 64 B.C., appears to have used Ionian Gulf in the same way. Herodotus also alludes to the Ionian Strait, indicating by that term the modern Strait of Otranto. In course of time a wider but vague and indefinite meaning was attached to Ionian Sea. It is perhaps in the works of Polybius, born 204 n.c., that one meets with these words employed in a way approximating most nearly to modern usage. He employed them, however, in a narrower sense than a modern would, to indicate that part of the Mediterranean Sea extending from the entrance of the Adriatic southward to the Peloponnesus, now the Morea. At a later time Pliny, born 23 A.D., included under the term both the Sicilian and Cretan seas besides the modern Ionian Sea. Later still all these arbitrary divisions of the Mediterranean were merged in the exten sion of the term uAdriaticp which comprised them all. The modern usage of the term Ionian Sea has already been explained. In its ancient and widest signification Ionium Mare must at one time have been understood to mean not the seas of Sicily and of Crete, but even also the far-away waters of the ancient Icarian Sea, a sheet of water nowadays always considered as a part of the historic lEgean.
In modern times many keels have stirred the dark blue waters of the Ionian Sea. From the island of Malta branch out in many di rections different steamship routes. From this island one may embark for Brindisi, Patros, Constantinople, Beyrout, Port Said, Alexandria and Bengazi — all of which ship-lines pass over the Ionian Sea. The route from Naples to Athens involves a passage over it. The trip from Athens to Tripoli includes it. And the voyage from Port Said to Brindisi runs through it. Cable lines dropping down into its greatest depths likewise connect its shores. The main among these begin at Malta and unite that island with ?Ante, Athens, Alexandria and Tripoli.