CHAPTER XIV

HOMER AND IONIA

_Who were the Ionians_?

While the ancients believed that the Homeric poems were composed in the Greek settlements on the Asian coast, and brought from Ionia to Hellas, modern critics often hold that the earliest lays were made in Greece, but that our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ contain a large percentage of much later Ionian work. In these circumstances it is natural to ask, _Who were the Ionians_? a point on which Homer throws no light. The Ionian name is not mentioned in the Catalogue any more than the Aeolian and Dorian names, and "the tunic-trailing Iaones" only appear in _Iliad_,