The Ionians (, ''Íōnes'', singular , ''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). 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 Ion, 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. 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.

Name of the Ionians

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.

Mycenaean

A fragmentary Linear B tablet from Knossos (tablet Xd 146) bears the name i-ja-wo-ne, interpreted by Ventris and Chadwick 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, used of some long-robed Greeks attacked by Hector, appears to be the same name without the *-w-.

Biblical

In the Book of Genesis 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.

Additionally but less surely Japheth may be related linguistically to the Greek mythological figure Iapetus.

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 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.

Assyrian

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.

The Assyrian word, which is preceded by the country determinative, has been reconstructed as *Iaunaia. More common is ia-a-ma-nu, ia-ma-nu and ia-am-na-a-a with the country determinative, reconstructed as Iamānu. Sargon II related that he took the latter from the sea like fish and that they were from "the sea of the setting sun." If the identification of Assyrian names is correct, at least some of the Ionian marauders came from Cyprus:

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.'

Indic

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.

Iranian

Ionians appear in a number of Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire as Yaunā, a nominative plural masculine, singular Yauna; 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; ...." At that time the empire probably extended around the Aegean to northern Greece.

Other

Modern eastern languages use the term "Ionian" to refer to all Greeks - this is true of Hebrew, Egyptian, Yunan in Turkish, Hunastan/Huyn in Armenian, Yūnān/Yūnāniyy in Persian and Arabic.

Etymology

The etymology of the word is uncertain of proof. Both Frisk and Beekes isolate an unknown root, *Ia-, pronounced *ya-. There are, however, some theories:

From an unknown early name of an eastern Mediterranean island population represented by Ha-nebu, an ancient Egyptian name for the people living there. From ancient Egyptian 'iwn "pillar, tree trunk" extended into 'iwnt "bow" (of wood?) and 'Iwntyw "bowmen, barbarians." This derivation is analogous on the one hand to the possible derivation of Dorians and on the other fits the Egyptian concept of "nine bows" with reference to the Sea Peoples. From an Indo-European onomatopoeic root *wi- or *woi- expressing a shout uttered by persons running to the assistance of others; according to Pokorny, *Iawones would mean "devotees of Apollo", based on the cry ''iē paiōn'' uttered in his worship.

Ionian language

In a landmark article of 1964 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.

Pre-Ionic Ionians

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

Herodotus of Halicarnassus asserts:

all are Ionians who are of Athenian descent and keep the feast Apaturia.

He further explains:

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, Naxos, Kea and Samos. But they were not just from Athens:

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: Pellene, Aegira, Aegae, Bura, Helice, Aegion, Rhype, Patrae, Phareae, Olenus, Dyme and Tritaeae. The most aboriginal Ionians were of Cynuria:

The Cynurians are aboriginal and seem to be the only Ionians, but they have been Dorianized by time and by Argive rule.

Strabo

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.

Classical Ionia

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 (philosophy))

See also

Pythagoras

Notes

Further reading

J.A.R Munro. "Pelasgians and Ionians". ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'', 1934 (JSTOR).

R.M. Cook. "Ionia and Greece in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C." ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'', 1946 (JSTOR).

External links

Note that the online edition omits the critical bibliography and runs paragraphs and section headings together. The paragraph division is not the one of the article. The reader should be aware that although useful the article necessarily omits all of modern scholarship.

Category:Ancient Greece Category:Ancient peoples Category:Ionia Category:Ancient tribes in Euboea Category:Ancient tribes in Attica

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