Part 19

While Colophon is important to us only in legendary history, MILETUS is the most illustrious city on the Ionian coast during the period of accredited history. It was itself a great place, and also founded a great number of colonies, which are said to have amounted to eighty. As the maritime states of Greece in their colonisation, as it were, divided the different seas among each other, so that Corinth chose the Adriatic, Chalcis and Eretria the seas about Sicily, and Athens the Hellespont, so we find the Milesians in the Euxine sea. There they founded Cyzicus, from which they exercised their power over the greater part of the Propontis; they then established themselves on all the coasts of the Euxine, and thereby opened to themselves inexhaustible sources of wealth. The commerce in those parts was certainly the most lucrative, and must have yielded them immense riches. The Doric town of Byzantium might have shut them out from the sea, but the Milesians had already become too powerful through their colonies. The large rivers and the shallow sea yielded them the fish which are so necessary for a Greek, and they also were the means of conveying the supplies of corn from the Crimea, the Ukraine, and the Dnieper, that is, from the country which now contains the great corn-market of Odessa. But the inhabitants of those coasts not only sold their own products, but purchased Greek merchandise with native gold from the country of the Arimaspae, where at present gold mines are again worked,—a fact which corroborates the tradition in Herodotus. They took in exchange wine, Greek woollen cloth, Egyptian linen, Persian robes, and many other costly things. Owing to this double commerce, Miletus was wealthy and great during the time of the Lydian kings, and remained so during the first period of the Persian dominion. Then it was plunged into the deepest misery by misfortunes which succeeded one another in rapid succession. Miletus had been obliged to submit to the Lydian kings, but their rule seems to have been limited to the exacting of tribute, and not to have disturbed its autonomy—a relation like that in which Ragusa stood to the Turkish empire, to which it paid tribute, though otherwise it enjoyed many advantages and privileges. This was the period of the greatest prosperity of Miletus. It submitted to the Persians without vehement opposition. Afterwards Aristagoras allowed himself to be tempted by Histiaeus to induce Miletus to rise against the overwhelming power of Persia. This insurrection was commenced without deliberation, and carried out without a well digested design and without character: the city was taken, and its inhabitants carried into Persia as slaves. This event was the subject of the historical drama (Μιλήτου ἅλωσις) of Phrynichus. Afterwards the city was again taken by Alexander, and thenceforth remained an insignificant place; its harbour may have been filled up at an early period.

Miletus was the original home of the Ionian philosophy: Thales, Anaximenes, and Anaximander were born there; it was also the native city of Arctinus, the greatest among the cyclic poets. During the Roman period it is often mentioned on account of the woollen cloths which were manufactured there; when Strabo wrote, it still existed indeed, but as a place of no importance at all.

In its neighbourhood, and within the boundaries of ancient Caria, were situated the two towns of MYUS and PRIENE, the latter of which is known as the birth-place of Bias, who wisely advised the Ionians to unite into one state, that they might be able to resist the barbarians.

The promontory of MYCALE is in the neighbourhood of Priene, opposite to Samos; it is a branch proceeding from mount Taurus. There the Athenians, under Xanthippus, gained a victory over the Phoenician fleet of the Persians, on the same day on which the battle of Plataeae was won; whereby the independence of the Greeks, and especially of their Asiatic colonies, was established.

SAMOS is great in history, and, like Miletus, was for a time mistress of the sea, but its greatness passed away early and quickly. Pythagoras, according to tradition, was a Samian, though little reliance can be placed upon it: Creophilus, the poet of the Οἰχαλίας ἅλωσις, too, is called a Samian, and tradition describes him as a son-in-law of Homer. The island was particularly celebrated at the time of Polycrates, who ruled far and wide over the sea and the islands. After him his brother Syloson attempted with a Persian army to conquer the island: the expedition inflicted the first blow upon it, for the Persians carried off a large number of its inhabitants as slaves. Samos then became connected with Athens, but shortly before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war it rose against the supremacy of Athens, and being re-conquered after a siege of ten months was severely chastised, and a portion of the island became subject to Athens. During the latter period of the Peloponnesian war, Samos was the head quarters of the Athenian fleet in that part of the sea, and the scene of fearful disturbances caused by the aristocratic or Spartan party as well as by the democratic or Athenian. Although weakened, the Samians afterwards took part in the social war of Rhodes, Chios, Cos, and Byzantium against Athens. I have not been able to make out anything about the part which Samos took in that war, except that the island was conquered and received cleruchi (Olymp. 108); it was a lucrative possession to the Athenians, and therefore of importance to them. After the battle of Chaeronea, Philip left them in the possession of Samos, that they might not be driven to extremes and throw themselves into the arms of Persia, the affairs of which were then managed by the brave Memnon. But after the Lamian war the island was taken from them, and restored to the Samians. Under Ptolemy Philadelphus and Euergetes, a division of the Egyptian fleet was stationed near Samos. The most interesting object in the island was the Heraeon, the temple of Hera, which was rich in the finest works of art, such as statues by Myron, Polycletus, and Praxiteles.

The island of Samos is very fertile, and was celebrated as such in antiquity. It is strange that the wine of Samos was thought bad by the ancients, for it is now valued very highly; no person from our northern countries would consider the wine of Chios bad either.

The nearest city on the coast was EPHESUS, in antiquity celebrated for its temple of Artemis, as Samos was for that of Hera. During the great period of Grecian history, it is mentioned as a distinguished city, and in the early times it was rich in great men: it was the native place of the philosopher Heraclitus, the iambic poet Hipponax, and of Apelles and Parrhasius. But notwithstanding its famous temple of Artemis, Ephesus was not of great political importance: it was situated on the Caÿstrus, which is very muddy, and has now changed the whole district into a pestilential marsh. Attalus of Pergamus was well disposed towards the city, and caused a pier to be built there, making the entrance of the harbour quite wide, while towards the interior, it grew narrower and narrower, in order that the current might become stronger; but his plan was ill calculated, for the current became weaker, and the harbour was more and more filled with mud, and only a roadstead remained. Ephesus was situated in three different places: the most ancient town is almost mythical; the second, near the temple, existed until the time of the successors of Alexander; and the third, lastly, which was built by Lysimachus close to the sea, was at a considerable distance from the temple, and the inhabitants of the old town were forced to remove to it. This New-Ephesus was for a long time the capital of Ionia, and was increasing even as late as the time of Augustus and Tiberius; it was an emporium for the whole country far and wide, though it had no longer a harbour. It was commonly the residence of the Roman governor. The origin of Ephesus, like that of most of the Ionian towns, is mythical. Artemis is a genuine Greek goddess, but her temple at Ephesus was specially revered by the Persians, as eastern nations often shewed a partiality towards foreign religions: they altered the ceremonial of the temple, and the employment of eunuchs in its service is of Persian origin. The temple was also known as an asylum: whoever in times of danger wished to protect his property, might deposit it, as we learn from Xenophon’s Anabasis,[73] in the treasury of the temple of Ephesus, whence he might afterwards take it back without loss. This sanctity of the temple also continued, after its restoration, during the Macedonian period and under the Romans. In the time of the Macedonian dominion, the city was one of high rank. When, under Ptolemy Euergetes, the coasts of Ionia and Thrace were in the possession of the Egyptians, the Egyptian governor had his seat at Ephesus. Antiochus Theos and Antiochus the Great also resided there, whence we must infer that the city contained a palace. John the Evangelist lived and died there.

In the neighbourhood of Ephesus, there were several small towns, one of which was LEBEDOS, which, in the time of Horace, was quite desolate, and more deserted than Gabii and Fidenae, for its inhabitants had been driven by Lysimachus to Ephesus, when he rebuilt that city: still, however, Horace wished to be able to spend his whole life there.

TEOS was the native place of Anacreon, and in other respects, too, of comparative importance, as it sent out colonies, such as Abdera. It was situated upon the isthmus.

COLOPHON was situated between Ephesus and Lebedos. I have already spoken of its ancient greatness. We there meet with the incomparable poet Mimnermus, the loss of whose productions is to us the most deplorable in ancient literature, and who composed his splendid poetry at a time when the rest of Greece was still slumbering. Thucydides, and Aristotle in his politics, mention _Notion_ as the port of Colophon. This place owed its origin to a feud among the citizens of Colophon, in which the democratic party seceded and settled on the sea-coast. At the time of the Peloponnesian war, an implacable enmity existed between the two.

ERYTHRAE on the gulf of Chios, which separates this island from the continent, was in ancient times the seat of a Sibyl. At an early period it carried on protracted wars with Colophon, which shows that it must have been a powerful state.

CLAZOMENAE was situated on an island,[74] whence in the peace of Antalcidas it became independent of Persia. Otherwise it is of no political importance, nor did it found any colonies. It was the birth-place of Anaxagoras.

PHOCAEA was very far removed from the other towns, Smyrna being situated between them, though the latter did not become an Ionian city until a later period. Phocaea refused to submit to Cyrus, and was, therefore, besieged and finally taken by his general Harpagus. Its inhabitants, however, had escaped to their ships; a great number of them wished to emigrate, but some returned to Phocaea and submitted to the Persians, while others founded Elea in Oenotria. Before this time, the Phocaeans were among the boldest navigators; they visited more especially the coasts of the western seas, Baetica, Tartessus, and the south of Gaul. In the latter country they founded Massilia, which afterwards established other colonies partly by itself, and partly in conjunction with the Phocaeans. The foundation of Massilia has sometimes, but unjustly been connected with the emigration in the time of Cyrus. Phocaea recovered to some extent, and continued to exist down to the middle ages, for it was situated in a fertile territory; but its navigation passed into the hands of the Smyrnaeans.

CHIOS is one of the most splendid islands in the world, for with the exception of a few desert and rough districts, it combines all the blessings of Ionia: it has excellent wine, and its soil produces in fact everything that agriculture demands of it; it had a beautiful harbour, and its inhabitants have at all times been active and enterprising men. Before the time of the Peloponnesian war, they showed wisdom in their relation to Athens, and took no part in the senseless insurrections of Samos and other islands, but conscientiously adhered to the treaties with Athens and remained quiet, whence they were treated by the Athenians with great respect. While the other towns had to pay money as contributions towards the Athenian fleet, Chios and Lesbos still retained their navy; Lesbos lost its fleet in consequence of its thoughtless revolt in the Peloponnesian war, but Chios remained faithful to Athens till after the Sicilian disaster. The Chians then wanted to place themselves at the head of an Ionian maritime confederation, which, however, was never realised. Afterwards they headed the the Social war (Olymp. 106). During the Macedonian period the Chians behaved with great prudence, and, like the Rhodians, preserved their republican independence. This state of things remained until the war of Mithridates, when they supported him, and were punished by the Romans in consequence. But the island soon recovered again. The great renown of Chios arose out of the belief, that Homer was a native of the island, and had lived there, because a _genos_ of Homerids existed there until a late period. In my opinion, Homer is a mythical hero; the genos of the Homerids must be viewed in the same light as all such γένη, e.g., that of the Asclepiadae and Butadae; a common origin of such a genos from one ancestor is altogether out of the question.[75] The author of a great portion of the Homeric poems, especially of the ground-work of our present Iliad, seems to have belonged to Smyrna; the testimony of those who call him Melesigenes is, in my opinion, entitled to the best consideration, although the author of the Hymn on Apollo calls himself a Chian.

About SMYRNA wonderful stories were current in antiquity. According to one of them, it was originally an Ionian settlement, and, considering its situation between Ephesus and Phocaea, this is most probable; afterwards it is stated to have passed into the hands of the Aeolians, from whom it was taken again, according to Herodotus, by the Ionians. It is then scarcely mentioned at all until after the time of Alexander. Antigonus the one-eyed in reality built Smyrna anew; nearly all that is related about its early history is legendary. Its site was so happily chosen, that among all the towns on that coast it was the most imperishable, and continually increased. Its harbour is very excellent, but had been overlooked in an unaccountable manner ever since its destruction by the Lydians. It was, particularly during the period that Ephesus was governed by Egypt, that Smyrna, being under the dominion of Syria, rose to eminence. During the unfortunate times of the Roman wars, the Smyrnaeans behaved with great prudence, as we see particularly from their treaty with the Magnesians. Under the Romans, and that even under the first emperors, Smyrna, alternately with Ephesus, was often the seat of the proconsul. The Romans procured its admission into the Ionian confederacy as the thirteenth town. According to the ancient notions, the Ionians would not have ventured to go beyond the sacred and established number, and in case of emergency, they would have incorporated a smaller town with a larger one, e.g., Lebedos with Ephesus or Colophon; but those scruples were then easily got over, and hence we now find thirteen Ionian towns mentioned in inscriptions, coins, etc. In like manner, Athens, in later times, had thirteen tribes, and a senate of the corresponding number of 650. Smyrna was often destroyed, once in a very fearful manner by Tamerlane, but it soon recovered. The correct orthography of the name, both with the Greeks and the Romans, is Zmyrna, in the same manner as they wrote Zmaragdos.

The meetings of the twelve Ionian towns took place at a spot called _Panionium_, below the promontory of Mycale, which formed about the central point among them. These meetings gave rise to a permanent town with a prytaneum, in which the meetings were held. This union among the Ionians was not of a political nature, though it seems to have been the original intention that it should be; but the autonomy of the individual states did not permit this, and hence Panionium was only a place for agones.

There were several more small towns in Ionia, which I will pass over here. Mount Mimas, a branch of mount Taurus, rises precipitously above Erythrae (ἠνεμόεις Μίμας in Homer).

AEOLIS.

The number of Aeolian towns in Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands amounted to thirty, but they formed several separate groups. One of these groups, the real Αἰολὶς δωδεκάπολις, had Cyme for its capital. There was also an Αἰολὶς ἐν Ἴδῃ in the interior of the country, which probably included Tenedos and Hecatonnesoi. Lesbos contained six towns. These Aeolian towns (the name is applied in its most proper sense to the first group or the dodecapolis) cannot, generally speaking, be compared in importance with the Ionian and Dorian settlements; they were μικρὰ πολίχνια; Smyrna’s importance belongs to the time when it had ceased to be Aeolian. It would lead me too far here to enumerate all the Aeolian towns whose names are mentioned only by one author or another, for they are otherwise unimportant; hence I shall notice only the most celebrated, and in point of fact there are only two out of the eleven (after the separation of Smyrna) that deserve to be noticed.

The first is CYME, with the surname _Phriconis_, which cannot be explained. The foundation of this place is assigned to an extremely early period, the report being, that it was built soon after the Trojan war. But not too much value must be attached to this tradition, any more than to most of the things belonging to the time anterior to the beginning of the Olympiads. Cyme is always spoken of as the greatest and most important among the Aeolian towns, but history does not justify this reputation, for the place nowhere appears possessed of power or influence. The historian Ephorus, who was born there, sheds considerable lustre upon it; the loss of his work is irreparable, and perhaps the most serious that we have to lament in ancient history. He cheerfully took the greatest pains to investigate the obscure periods of antiquity, and must be regarded as the first critical inquirer into the early history of Greece. He thoroughly deserves the respect paid to him by his contemporaries, although his style, according to the testimony of Isocrates, was dry and inferior to that of Theopompus: perhaps we should judge differently of him if we had his work. The opinion that Hesiod was a native of Cyme, seems to be a gross delusion, the origin of which, however, is not clear to me.

We must also notice GRYNEON with its celebrated temple of Apollo, who is for this reason called _Gryneus_ by Virgil and Ovid.

TEMNOS remained a somewhat important place even in later times. The other towns are quite insignificant.

The whole history of these Aeolian colonies is involved in singular obscurity. Penthilus, a son of Orestes, is said to have first settled with Aeolians in Lesbos, and Gras, his son or grand-son, is reported to have founded Cyme on the mainland; he was worshipped there as archegetes, which, however, means nothing else, than that the foundation was ascribed to Orestes himself. Gras here is probably nothing but the eponymus to _Graecus_, standing to the _Graeci_ in the same relation as Helen does to the Hellenes. The matter is so obscure that we ought to approach it with the utmost caution; I for my part cannot understand how Agamemnon’s grand-son should have gone into that country with such a miscellaneous race as the Aeolians, and with a colony which is said to have consisted chiefly of Thessalian Aeolians. I am much more inclined to believe, that after the Trojan war the race of the Pelopids or Agamemnonids remained behind as rulers in those parts; and this is not improbable in itself, since the fact of the Trojan war certainly cannot be doubted: the poetical account of Helen, of the siege, and the wooden-horse, is not historical, but the war and its final issue cannot be denied. I suppose, therefore, that Greeks under the Agamemnonids remained behind in the conquered Teucrian country. If this be so, we here have another instance of that change of the poles of a tradition, to which I have repeatedly drawn your attention: Pelops is transferred from Phrygia to Peloponnesus, and the Pelopids from Peloponnesus to Asia. But the chief point is this, we must regard the Greek inhabitants of that coast as a people of the same race as the western Hellenes, as in fact even in tradition all the country was originally Pelasgian, whence at a later period it likewise became identical with the Hellenic countries. The barbarous tribes on that coast, the Mysians, Lydians and Carians, did not arrive until a latter time. But we must not go too far in tracing this origin of the Aeolian colonies.

The northern part of Aeolis embraced the πολίχνια ἐν Ἴδῃ, in what was properly the Teucrian country; and to it belonged Abydos, Tenedos, and Hecatonnesoi. Although these towns were Greek, yet they were viewed by the ancients in a very different light. Some of them play rather a prominent part in the later wars of the Greeks, as for example SCEPSIS, the native place of the grammarian Demetrius, an historical commentator of Homer; the town is mentioned in Xenophon’s Hellenica. We must here also mention the Aeolian ILION, which arose after the destruction of ancient Ilion. ASSOS was situated at the foot of mount Ida, shut in between the mountains and the sea; some mysterious ruins of it are still extant. ABYDOS stood on the narrowest part of the Hellespont, where it is only seven stadia, about one mile, in breadth. TENEDOS was flourishing in consequence of its situation at the entrance of the Hellespont; it was a commercial place, populous and industrial, and derived advantages from its situation even as late as the time of the Romans. The town in Hecatonnesoi is mentioned only by Herodotus.

That this part of Aeolis was likewise a dodecapolis, is indeed no more than a conjecture, for we cannot make out the names of all the towns; but it is at least very probable partly from analogy, and partly from the words of Strabo; for out of the number of the thirty towns which he calls Aeolian, twelve belong to the southern dodecapolis and six to Lesbos.

LESBOS is the pearl of the Aeolian race; in the Trojan times it is called Pelasgian, but in such a manner that the Pelasgian Macar in Homer is an Aeolian.[76] Lesbos is a blessed country, and excellent for the cultivation of the vine and grain, like Chios; it is only wanting in mastix, and its wine too is somewhat inferior to that of Chios; it has, however, no rough districts like Chios, but only pleasing hills and numerous plains, many excellent harbours, and bays entering far into the country. It had originally six towns, among which, however, _Arisba_ was destroyed at an early period by the Methymnaeans; its name reminds us of the town on the mainland known from Homer; it had disappeared as early as the time of Herodotus. Among the remaining five, two are towns of importance, Mitylene and Methymna; the three others are Pyrrha, Eresos, and Antissa.