The Ionians (Greek: Ἴωνες, Íōnes, singular Ἴων, Íōn) were one of the four major tribes into which the Classical Greeks considered the population of Hellenes to have been divided (along with the Dorians, Aeolians and Achaeans).[1] The Ionian dialect was one of the three major linguistic divisions of the Hellenic world, together with the Dorian and Aeolian.
"Ionian" with reference to populations had several senses in Classical Greece. In the narrowest sense, it was used of the region of Ionia in Asia Minor. In a more broad sense, it could be used to describe all speakers of the Ionic dialect, which also included the populations of Euboea, the Cyclades and many colonies founded by Ionian colonists. Finally, in the broadest sense, it could be used to describe all those who spoke languages of the East Greek group, which included Attic.
The foundation myth which was current in the Classical period suggested that the Ionians were named after the Ion (mythology), son of Xuthus, and lived in the north Peloponnesian region of Aegilaus. When the Dorians invaded the Peloponnese and expelled the Achaeans from the Argolid and Lacedaemonia, the Achaeans moved into Aegilaus (henceforth known as Achaea), and the Ionians were in turn expelled.[2] The Ionians went to Attica and mingled with the population there, before many people finally emigrated to the coast of Asia Minor, founding the historical region of Ionia.
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Unlike "Aeolians" and "Dorians", "Ionians" appears in the languages of different civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean and as far east as the Indian subcontinent. They are not the earliest Greeks to appear in the records; that distinction belongs to the Danaans and the Achaeans. The trail of the Ionians begins in the Mycenaean Greek records of Crete.
A fragmentary Linear B tablet from Knossos (tablet Xd 146) bears the name i-ja-wo-ne, interpreted by Ventris and Chadwick[3] as possibly the dative or nominative plural case of *Iāwones, an ethnic name. The Knossos tablets are dated to 1400 or 1200 B.C. They were then prior to Dorian dominance in Crete, if the name refers to Cretans.
The Homeric name, Iaones,[4] used of some long-robed Greeks attacked by Hector, appears to be the same name without the *-w-.
In the Book of Genesis[5] of the English Bible Javan is a son of Japheth. With regard to the tribal country-naming scheme of the Old Testament, in which the name of the country becomes an eponymous family founder, Javan is believed nearly universally by Bible scholars to represent the Ionians; that is, Javan is Ion. The Hebrew is Yāwān, plural Yəwānīm.[6]
Additionally but less surely Japheth may be related linguistically to the Greek mythological figure Iapetus.[7]
The locations of Biblical tribal countries have been the subjects of centuries of scholarship and yet remain to various degrees open questions. The Book of Isaiah[8] gives what may be a hint by listing "the nations ... that have not heard my fame" (God's) including Javan and immediately after "the isles afar off." Are the isles in apposition to Javan or the last item in the series? If the former, the expression is typically used of the population of the islands in the Aegean Sea.
The date of the Book of Isaiah cannot precede the date of the man Isaiah, which was the 8th century BC.
Some letters of the Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BC record attacks by what appear to be Ionians on the cities of Phoenicia:
For example, a raid by the Ionians (ia-u-na-a-a) on the Phoenician coast is reported to Tiglath-Pileser III in a letter of the 730's find at Nimrud.[9]
The Assyrian word, which is preceded by the country determinative, has been reconstructed as *Iaunaia.[10] More common is ia-a-ma-nu, ia-ma-nu and ia-am-na-a-a with the country determinative, reconstructed as Iamānu.[11] Sargon II related that he took the latter from the sea like fish and that they were from "the sea of the setting sun."[12] If the identification of Assyrian names is correct, at least some of the Ionian marauders came from Cyprus:[13]
Sargon's Annals for 709, claiming that tribute was sent to him by 'seven kings of Ya (ya-a'), a district of Yadnana whose distant abodes are situated a seven-days' journey in the sea of the setting sun', is confirmed by a stele set up at Citium in Cyprus 'at the base of a mountain ravine ... of Yadnana.'
Ionians appear in Indic literature and documents as Yavana and Yona. In documents these names refer to the Indo-Greek Kingdoms; that is, the states formed by the Macedonians, either Alexander the Great or his successors on the Indian subcontinent. The earliest such documentation is the Edicts of Ashoka, dated to 250 BC, within 10 or 20 years.
Prior to then the Yavanas appear in the Vedas with reference to the Vedic period, which could be as early as the 2nd millennium BC. The Vedas are to be distinguished from the Vedic period, which is much older than they. If there were any hope of finding aboriginal Indo-European Ionians under that name it would be there, but in the Vedas the Yavanas are a kingdom of Mlechhas, or barbarians, to the far west, out of the line of descent of Indic culture, in the same category as the Sakas, or Skythians (who spoke Iranian), and thus probably already were Greek. They had expanded from west to east, not vice versa. The Ionians of the Aegean are the identity customarily assigned to them.
Ionians appear in a number of Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire as Yaunā, a nominative plural masculine, singular Yauna;[14] for example, in inscription of Darius on the south wall of the palace at Persepolis includes in the provinces of the empire "Ionians who are of the mainland and (those) who are by the sea, and countries which are across the sea; ...."[15] At that time the empire probably extended around the Aegean to northern Greece.
Modern eastern languages use the term "Ionian" to refer to all Greeks - this is true of Hebrew, Egyptian, Hunastan/Huyn in Armenian, and Yūnān/Yūnāniyy in Persian and Arabic.
The etymology of the word is uncertain of proof. Both Frisk and Beekes isolate an unknown root, *Ia-, pronounced *ya-.[16] There are, however, some theories:
In a landmark article of 1964[20] Vladimir Georgiev summarized the relationship of the three main historical dialects and gave an estimate of their chronology as follows. Prior to the 20th century BC existed three dialects of Greek: Iawonic, Iawolic and Doric (Georgiev's names). Iawonic was spoken in Attica, Euboea, East Boeotia and the Peloponnesus.
In the 16th century BC a new koinē was formed from Iawonic and Iawolic: the Mycenaean Greek language. It persisted until about 1200 when it became the major source of Arcado-Cyprian, with some Doric influence. The Ionians taking up the tradition of epic poetry created Homeric Greek. Ionian descends from Iawonic.
The literary evidence of the Ionians leads back to mainland Greece in Mycenaean times before there was an Ionia. The classical sources seem determined that they were to be called Ionians along with other names even then. This view cannot be documented with inscriptional evidence and yet the literary evidence, which is manifestly at least partially legendary, seems to reflect a general verbal tradition.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus asserts:[21]
all are Ionians who are of Athenian descent and keep the feast Apaturia.
He further explains:[22]
The whole Hellenic stock was then small, and the last of all its branches and the least regarded was the Ionian; for it had no considerable city except Athens.
The Ionians spread from Athens to other places in the Aegean Sea: Sifnos and Serifos,[23] Naxos,[24] Kea, Chalcidice, Eretria[25] and Samos.[26] But they were not just from Athens:[27]
These Ionians, as long as they were in the Peloponnesus, dwelt in what is now called Achaea, and before Danaus and Xuthus came to the Peloponnesus, as the Greeks say, they were called Aegialian Pelasgians. They were named Ionians after Ion the son of Xuthus.
Achaea was divided into 12 communities originally Ionian:[28] Pellene, Aegira, Aegae, Bura, Helice, Aegion, Rhype, Patrae, Phareae, Olenus, Dyme and Tritaeae. The most aboriginal Ionians were of Cynuria:[29]
The Cynurians are aboriginal and seem to be the only Ionians, but they have been Dorianized by time and by Argive rule.
In Strabo's account of the origin of the Ionians, Hellen, son of Deucalion, ancestor of the Hellenes, king of Phthia, arranged a marriage between his son Xuthus and the daughter of king Erechtheus of Athens. Xuthus then founded the Tetrapolis ("Four Cities") of Attica, a rural district. His son, Achaeus, went into exile in a land subsequently called Achaea after him. Another son of Xuthus, Ion, conquered Thrace, after which the Athenians made him king of Athens. Attica was called Ionia after his death. Those Ionians colonized Aigialia changing its name to Ionia also. When the Heracleidae returned the Achaeans drove the Ionians back to Athens. Under the Codridae they set forth for Anatolia and founded 12 cities in Caria and Lydia following the model of the 12 cities of Achaea, formerly Ionian.[30]
During the 6th century BC, Ionian coastal towns such as Miletus and Ephesus became the focus of a revolution in approaches to traditional thinking about Nature. Instead of explaining natural phenomena by recourse to traditional religion/myth, the cultural climate was such that men began to form hypotheses about the natural world based on ideas gained from both personal experience and deep reflection. These men - Thales and his successors - were called physiologoi, those who discoursed on Nature. They were sceptical of religious explanations for natural phenomena and instead sought purely mechanical and physical explanations. They are credited as being of critical importance to the development of the 'scientific attitude' towards the study of Nature. (see Ionian school)
'IONIANS, the name given by the Greeks to one of the principal divisions of the Hellenic peoples. In historic times it was applied to the inhabitants of (I) Attica, where some believed the Ionians to have originated; (2) parts of Euboea; (3) the Cycladic islands, except Melos and Thera; (4) a section of the west coast of Asia Minor, from the gulf of Smyrna to that of Iasus (see Ionia); (5) colonies from ' any of the foregoing, notably in Thrace, Propontis and Pontus in the west, and in Egypt (Naucratis, Daphnae); some authorities have found traces of an ancient Ionian population in (6) north-eastern Peloponnese. The meaning and derivation of the name are not known. It occurs in two forms, 'IitFoves and` "IWVEs (compare Xaoves and X(.7.VEs in Epirus) - not counting the name '16vtos applied to the open sea west of Greece. In the traditional genealogy of the Hellenes, Ion, the ancestor of the Ionians, is brother of Achaeus and son of Xuthus (who held Peloponnese after the dispersal of the children of Hellen). But this genealogy, though it is attributed to Hesiod, is apparently post-Homeric; and it is clear that the Ionian name had independent and varied uses and meanings in very early times. In Homer the word IitFoves occurs as a name of inhabitants of Attica, with the epithet (Il. xiii. 685=" trail-vest "), describing some point of costume, and later regarded as imputing effeminacy. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo of Delos (7th century) describes an Ionian population in the Cyclades with a loose religious league about the Delian sanctuary.
The same word 'Ic Fcev (Javan) appears in Hebrew literature of the 8th and 7th centuries, to denote one group of the " Japhetic " peoples of Asia Minor, Cyprus and perhaps Rhodes: " by these were the isles of the nations divided, in their lands, every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations," a comprehensive expression for the island-strewn regions farther west (Gen. x. 10). In Ezek. xxvii. 13, 19, Javan trades with Tyre in slaves, bronze-work, iron and drugs. Later allusions show that on Semitic lips Javan meant western traders in general. In Persian Yauna was the generic term for Greeks.' Yunan is still a popular synonym for Oroum, a Greek, among the Arabs; in India Yavana was long the generic name for all foreigners from the north and west, a use dating probably from Alexander's day and the Graeco-Bactrian monarchs.
The earliest explicit Greek account of the Ionians is given in the 5th century by Herodotus (i. 45, 5 6, 1 43- 1 45, v. 66, vii. 94: viii. 44-4 6). The " children of Ion " originated in north-eastern Peloponnese; and traces of them remained in Troezen and Cynuria. Expelled by the Achaeans (who seem to have entered Peloponnese about four generations before the Dorian Invasion) they invaded and dominated Attica; and about the time of the Dorian Invasion took the lead under the Attic branch of the Neleids of Pylus (Hdt. i. 147, v. 65) in the colonization of the Cyclades and of Asiatic Ionia, which in Homer is still " Carian." Many of the colonists, however, were not Ionians, but refugees from other parts of Greece, between Euboea and Argolis (Hdt. i. 146); others looked on Attica as their first home, though the true Ionians were intruders there. The Pan-Ionian sanctuary of Poseidon on the Asiatic promontory of Mycale was regarded as perpetuating a cult from Peloponnesian Achaea, and the league of twelve cities which maintained it, as imitated from an Achaean dodecapolis, and as claiming (absurdly, according to Herodotus i. 143) purer descent than other Ionians.
In Herodotus's account of the first Greek intercourse with Egypt (about 664 B.e.) he describes " Ionian and Carian " adventurers and mercenaries in the Delta. Later the commoner antithesis is between Ionian and Dorian, first (probably) in the colonial regions of Asia Minor, and later more universally.
In the 5th century the name " Ionian " was already falling into discredit. Causes of this were (I) the peace-loving luxury (born of commercial wealth and contact with Oriental life) of the great Ionian cities of Asia; (2) the tameness with which they submitted first to Lydia and to Persia, then to Athenian pretensions, then to Sparta, and finally to Persia again; (3) the decadence and downfall of Athens, which still counted as Ionian and had claimed (since Solon's time) seniority among " Ionian " states. In the later 4th century the name survives only (a) as a geographical expression for part of the coast of Asia Minor, (b) in European Greece as the name of that section of the Northern Amphictyony in which Athens and its colonies were reckoned.
The traditional history of Asiatic Ionia is generally accepted, and in its broad outlines is probably well founded. Common to all groups of Ionians in the Aegean is a dialect of Greek which has n for a (in Attic only partially) and (in Asiatic Ionian especially) for r in certain words. Herodotus states that there were four distinct dialects in Asiatic Ionia itself (i. 142) and the dialect of Attica differed widely from all other forms of Ionic. Earlier phases of Ionic forms are dominant in the language of Homer. Most Ionian states exhibit also traces of the fourfold tribal divisions named after the " children of Ion "; but additional tribes occur locally. (Hdt. v. 66, 69.) All reputed colonies from Attica (except Ephesus and Colophon) kept also the feast of Apaturia; and many worshipped Apollo Patrous as the reputed father of Ion. The few observations hitherto made on the sites of Ionian cities indicate continuity of settlement and culture as far back as the latest phases of the Mycenaean (Late Minoan III.) Age and not farther, supporting thus far the traditional foundation dates.
The theory of E. Curtius (1856-1890) that the Ionians originated in Asia Minor and spread thence through the Cyclades to Euboea and Attica deserts ancient tradition on linguistic and ethnological grounds of doubtful value. Ad. Holm supports it (Gesch. Gr., Berlin, 1886, i. 86), but A. von Gutschmid (Beitr. z. Gesch. d. alten Orients, Leipzig, 1856, 124 ff.) and E. Meyer (Philologus NF. 2, 1889, p. 268 ff.; NF. 3, 1890, p. 479 ff.) follow Herodotus with qualifications. B. Bury (Eng. Hist. Rev. xv. 228), though he regards the Ionian peoples as of European origin, thinks that they may have got their name from some part of the Asiatic coast. Ionian culture and art, though little known in their earlier phases, derive their inspiration on the one side from those of the old Aegean (Minoan) civilization, on the other from the Oriental (mainly Assyrian) models which penetrated to the coast through the Hittite civilization of Asia Minor. Egyptian influence is almost absent until the time of Psammetichus, but then becomes predominant for a while. Local and regional peculiarities, however, disappear almost wholly in the 5th and 4th centuries, under the overpowering influence of Athens.
Besides the sections on Ionians in the general histories of Greece and the references given in G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, i. (2nd ed., Gotha, 1893), pp. 262, 277 ff., see E. Curtius, Die Ionier vor der ionischen Wanderung (Berlin, 1855), and papers in Gott. Gel. Anz. (1856), p. 1152 f. and (1859), p. 2021 f.; Jahrb. f. kl. Philol. 83 (1860), p. 449 f.; Hermes 25 (1890), p. 141 f.; A. von Gutschmid, Beitrdge z. Desch. d. alten Orients (Leipzig, 1856), p. 124 ff.; E. Meyer, Philologus 47 (NF. 2, 1889), p. 268 ff. and 49 (NF. 3, 189 0), P. 479 ff.; V. Boehlau, Aus ionischen and ¢olischen Necropolen (Cassel, 1897); H. W. Smyth, The Ionic Dialect (1889). P. Cauer, " De dialecto attica vetustiore quaestiones epigraphicae," in G. Curtius, Studien Z. gr. u. lat. Gramm. 8 (1875), p. 223, 399 Karsten, De titulorum Ionicorum dialecto (Halle, 1882); F. Bechtel, Die Inschriften des ion. Dialekts (Gottingen, 1877). For the political history of the Ionian Greeks see GREECE: History, and IoNIA; for the special history and characteristics of individual Ionian cities, the respective names. (J. L. M.)
Categories: ION-IZU | Ancient Greece
Ionians
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