The Ionians (; , Íōnes, singular Ἴων, Íōn) were one of the traditional four major tribes of Ancient Greece, alongside the Dorians, Aeolians, and Achaeans.[Apollodorus I, 7.3] The Ionic Greek was one of the three major linguistic divisions of the Hellenic world, together with the Doric Greek and Aeolic Greek dialects.
When referring to populations, " Ionian" defines several groups in Classical Greece. In its narrowest sense, the term referred to the region of Ionia in Asia Minor. In a broader sense, it could be used to describe all speakers of the Ionic dialect, which in addition to those in Ionia proper also included the Greek populations of Euboea, the Cyclades, and many cities founded by Ionian Settler. Finally, in the broadest sense it could be used to describe all those who spoke languages of the East Greek group, which included Attic Greek.
The foundation myth which was current in the Classical Greece suggested that the Ionians were named after Ion, son of Xuthus, who lived in the north Peloponnese region of Aigialeia. When the Dorian invasion the Peloponnese they expelled the Achaeans from the Argolid and Lacedaemonia. The displaced Achaeans moved into Aigialeia (thereafter known as Achaea), in turn expelling the Ionians from Aigialeia.[Pausanias VII, 1.7] The Ionians moved to Attica and mingled with the local population of Attica, and many years later emigrated to the coast of Asia Minor founding the historical region of Ionia.
Unlike the austere and militaristic Dorians, the Ionians are renowned for their love of philosophy, art, democracy, and pleasure – Ionian traits that were most famously expressed by the Athens.[Kōnstantinos D. Paparrēgopulos, Historikai Pragmateiai – Volume 1, 1858] The Ionian school of philosophy, centered on Miletus, was characterized by a focus on non-supernatural explanations for natural phenomena and a search for rational explanations of the universe, thereby laying the foundation for scientific inquiry and rational thought in Western philosophy.
Etymology
The
etymology of the word Ἴωνες or Ἰᾱ́ϝoνες is uncertain.
[Robert S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 608 f.] Hjalmar Frisk isolates an unknown root,
*Ia-, pronounced
*ya-.
[ To find the full presentation in H. J. Frisk's Griechisches Wörterbuch search on page 1,748, being sure to include the comma. For a similar presentation in Beekes' A Greek Etymological Dictionary search on Ionian in Etymology. Both linguists state a full panoply of "Ionian" words with sources.] There are, however, some theories:
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From a Proto-Indo-European onomatopoeia root *wi- or *woi- expressing a shout uttered by persons running to the assistance of others; according to Julius Pokorny, *Iāwones could mean "devotees of Apollo", based on the cry iḕ paiṓn uttered in his worship; the god was also called iḕios himself.
[ In Pokorny's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959), p. 1176.]
-
From an unknown early name of an eastern Mediterranean island population represented by , an ancient Egyptian name for the people living there.
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From a Proto-Indo-European root *uiH-, meaning "power."
[Nikolaev, Alexander S. (2006), "Ἰάoνες" , Acta Linguistica Petropolitana, 2(1), pp. 100–115.]
History of the name
Unlike "Aeolians" and "Dorians", "Ionians" appears in the languages of different civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean and as far east as
Han China. 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
Michael Ventris and
John 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. and thus pre-date the Dorian dominance in
Crete, if the name refers to
Crete.
The name first appears in Greek literature in Homer as Ἰάονες, iāones,[Homer. Iliad, Book XIII, Line 685.] used on a single occasion of some long-robed Greeks attacked by Hector and apparently identified with Athenians, and this Homeric form appears to be identical with the Mycenaean form but without the Digamma. This name also appears in a fragment of the other early poet, Hesiod, in the singular Ἰάων, iāōn.[Hes. fr. 10a.23 M-W: see ]
Biblical
In the Book of Genesis
[Book of Genesis, 10.2.] of the English Bible,
Javan, known in
Hebrew language as
Yāwān and in plural
Yəwānīm, is a son of
Japheth. Javan, meaning 'Greek',
[ Jewish Language Review (1983) Volume: 3rd, Association for the Study of Jewish Languages, p. 89.] is believed nearly universally by Bible scholars to represent the Ionians, corresponding to the Greek Ion, and to serve as a name for the
Ancient Greece and Macedonians.
The term is also found in other ancient literature; the
Yevana (Ionians) aligned with the
Hittites against Egypt, while the
Yauna of the Persian records corresponds to the Ionians of Asia Minor.
Additionally, though less surely, Japheth may be related linguistically to the Greek mythological figure Iapetus.[: American Standard Version] These isles may be considered as an 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.
Assyrian
Some letters of the Neo-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 from the 730s BC discovered at Nimrud.
The Assyrian word, which is preceded by the country determinative, has been reconstructed as *Iaunaia.[ See pages 120-121.] If the identification of Assyrian names is correct, at least some of the Ionian marauders came from Cyprus:[ See page 17 for the quote.]
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.'
Iranian
Ionians appear in a number of
Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire as
Yaunā (𐎹𐎢𐎴𐎠),
a
nominative plural masculine, singular Yauna;
for example, an 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; ...."
[Kent, p. 136.] At that time the empire probably extended around the Aegean to northern Greece.
Indic
Inspired by Achaemenid Iranians, Ionians appear in Indic literature and documents as Yavana and Yona. In documents, these names refer to the Indo-Greek Kingdoms: the states formed by the Macedonian Alexander the Great and his successors on the Indian subcontinent. The earliest such documentation is the Edicts of Ashoka. The Thirteenth Edict is dated to 260–258 BC and directly refers to the "Yonas".
Chinese
Dayuan' (or Tayuan; ;
Middle Chinese dâiC-jwɐn < LHC:
dɑh-ʔyɑn[Schuessler, Axel. (2009) Minimal Old Chinese and Later Han Chinese.. University of Hawai'i Press. p. 233, 268]) is the Chinese
exonym for a country that existed in
Ferghana valley in
Central Asia, described in the Chinese historical works of
Records of the Grand Historian and the
Book of Han. It is mentioned in the accounts of the Chinese
explorer Zhang Qian in 130 BCE and the numerous embassies that followed him into Central Asia. The country of Dayuan is generally accepted as relating to the
Ferghana Valley, controlled by the
Hellenistic polis Alexandria Eschate (modern
Khujand,
Tajikistan), which can probably be understood as "Greco-Fergana city-state" in English language.
Other languages
Most modern
West Asia languages use the terms "Ionia" and "Ionian" to refer to Greece and Greeks. That is true of
Hebrew language (Yavan 'Greece' / Yevani fem. Yevania 'a Greek'),
Armenian (Hunastan 'Greece'
/ Huyn 'a Greek'), and the
Classical Arabic words (al-Yūnān 'Greece' / Yūnānī fem. Yūnāniyya pl. Yūnān 'a Greek',
probably from Aramaic Yawnānā
) are used in most modern
Arabic dialects including Egyptian and Palestinian
as well as being used in modern
Persian language (Yūnānestān 'Greece' / Yūnānī pl. Yūnānīhā/Yūnānīyān 'Greeks')
and
Turkish language too via Persian (Yunanistan 'Greece' / Yunan 'a Greek person' pl. Yunanlar 'Greek people').
Ionic language
Ionic Greek was a
subdialect of the Attic–Ionic or Eastern dialect group of
Ancient Greek. The Ionic group traditionally comprises three dialectal varieties that were spoken in
Euboea (West Ionic), the northern
Cyclades (Central Ionic), and from
c. 1000 BC onward in
Ionia (East Ionic), where Ionian colonists from
Athens founded their cities. Ionic was the base of several literary language forms of the
Archaic Greece and
Classical Greece periods, both in poetry and prose. The works of
Homeric (
The Iliad,
The Odyssey,
Homeric Hymns) and of
Hesiod were written in a literary form of the Ionic dialect called
Homeric Greek or
Epic Greek. Ionic was eventually supplanted by the
Attic Greek dialect which had become the dominant dialect of the Greek world by the 5th century BC.
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 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:
[Herodotus. Histories. Book I, Chapter 147.]all are Ionians who are of Athens descent and keep the feast Apaturia.
He further explains:
[Herodotus. Histories. Book I, Chapter 143.]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,
[Herodotus. Histories. Book 8, Section 48.1.] Naxos Island,
[Herodotus. Histories. Book 8, Section 46.3.] Kea
[Herodotus. Histories. Book 8, Section 46.2.] and
Samos Island.
[Herodotus. Histories. Book 6, Section 22.3.] But they were not just from Athens:
[Herodotus. Histories. Book 7, Chapter 94.]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 Aigialeia Pelasgians. They were named Ionians after Ion the son of Xuthus.
Achaea was divided into 12 communities originally Ionian:
[Herodotus. Histories. Book 1, Section 145.1.] Pellana,
Aigeira, Aegae, Bura,
Helike,
Aigio, Rhype,
Patras, Phareae,
Olenus,
Dyme and Tritaeae. The most aboriginal Ionians were of Cynuria:
[Herodotus. Histories. Book 8, Section 73.3.]The 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.
[Strabo. Geography. Book 8, Section 7.1.]
Ionian School of philosophy
During the 6th century BC, Ionian coastal towns, such as
Miletus and
Ephesus, became the focus of a revolution in 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
Milesian school—were called
physiologoi, those who discoursed on
Nature. They were skeptical 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. According to physicist
Carlo Rovelli, the work of the Ionian school produced the "first great scientific revolution" and the earliest example of critical thinking, which would come to define Greek, and subsequently modern, thought.
Notes
Further reading
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J. A. R Munro. "Pelasgians and Ionians". The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1934 (JSTOR).
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R. M. Cook. "Ionia and Greece in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C." The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1946 (JSTOR).
External links
