Ionians

The Ionians (/aɪˈoʊniənz/; Greek: Ἴωνες, Íōnes, singular Ἴων, Íōn) were one of the four major
tribes that the Greeks considered themselves to be divided into during the ancient period;
the other three being the Dorians, Aeolians, and Achaeans.[2] The Ionian dialect was one of
the three major linguistic divisions of the Hellenic world, together with the Dorian and
Aeolian dialects.
 Ionian soldier (Old Persian cuneiform , Yaunā)[1] of the Achaemenid army, circa 480 BCE. Xerxes I tomb relief.

The location of ancient Ionia on the coast of modern-day Turkey.

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 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, who lived in the north Peloponnesian region of
Aigialeia. When the Dorians invaded 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.[3] The Ionians moved to Attica and
mingled with the local population of Attica, and many 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 Athenians.[4]

Etymology

The etymology of the word Ἴωνες or Ἰάϝoνες is uncertain.[5] Frisk isolates an unknown
root, *Ia-, pronounced *ya-.[6] There are, however, some theories:

From a Proto-Indo-European onomatopoeic root *wi- or *woi- expressing a shout

uttered by persons running to the assistance of others; according to Pokorny, *Iawones
could mean "devotees of Apollo", based on the cry iḕ paiṓn uttered in his worship; the god
was also called iḕios himself.[7]

From an unknown early name of an eastern Mediterranean island population represented

by ḥꜣw-nbwt, an ancient Egyptian name for the people living there.[8]

From ancient Egyptian jwn "pillar, tree trunk" extended into jwnt "bow" (of wood?) and
jwntjw "bowmen, archers."[9] 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 a Proto-Indo-European root *uiH-, meaning "power."[10]

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 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 E…
A fragmentary Linear B tablet from Knossos (tablet Xd 146) bears the name i-ja-wo-ne,
interpreted by Ventris and Chadwick[11] 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 Cretans.

The name first appears in Greek literature in Homer as Ἰάονες, iāones,[12] 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 *-w-. This name also appears in a fragment of the other early poet, Hesiod, in
the singular Ἰάων, iāōn.[13]

Biblical E…

In the Book of Genesis[14] of the English Bible, Javan is a son of Japheth. Javan is believed
nearly universally by Bible scholars to represent the Ionians; that is, Javan is Ion. The
Hebrew is Yāwān, plural Yəwānīm.[15]

Additionally, but less surely, Japheth may be related linguistically to the Greek
mythological figure Iapetus.[16]
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[17] gives
what may be a hint by listing "the nations... that have not heard my fame" including Javan
and immediately after "the isles afar off." 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.

The date of the Book of Isaiah cannot precede the date of the man Isaiah, in the 8th
century BC.

Assyrian E…

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.[18]

The Assyrian word, which is preceded by the country determinative, has been
reconstructed as *Iaunaia.[19] More common is ia-a-ma-nu, ia-ma-nu and ia-am-na-a-a with
the country determinative, reconstructed as Iamānu.[20] Sargon II related that he took the
latter from the sea like fish and that they were from "the sea of the setting sun."[21] If the
identification of Assyrian names is correct, at least some of the Ionian marauders came
from Cyprus:[22]

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 E…
Ionians appear in a number of Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire as Yaunā
( ),[23] a nominative plural masculine, singular Yauna;[24] 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; ...."[25] At that time the empire probably extended around the Aegean to
northern Greece.

Indic E…

The Seleucid king Antiochos ("Aṃtiyako Yona Rājā" ("The Yona king Antiochos")) is named as a recipient of Ashoka's
medical treatments, together with his Hellenistic neighbours, in the Edicts of Ashoka (circa 250 BCE).[26]

"Aṃtiyako Yona Rājā" ("The Greek king Antiochos"), mentioned in Major Rock Edict No.2, here at Girnar. Brahmi
script.[27]

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; 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.

Other languages E…
Most modern Middle Eastern languages use the terms "Ionia" and "Ionian" to refer to Greece
and Greeks. That is true of Hebrew (Yavan 'Greece' / Yevani fem. Yevania 'a Greek'),[28]
Armenian (Hunastan 'Greece'[29] / Huyn 'a Greek'), and the Classical Arabic words (al-Yūnān
'Greece' / Yūnānī fem. Yūnāniyya pl. Yūnān 'a Greek',[30] probably from Aramaic Yawnānā[31])
are used in most modern Arabic dialects including Egyptian and Palestinian[32] as well as
being used in modern Persian (Yūnānestān 'Greece' / Yūnānī pl. Yūnānīhā/Yūnānīyān 'Greek')[33]
and Turkish too via Persian (Yunanistan 'Greece' / Yunan 'a Greek person' pl. Yunanlar 'Greek
people').[34]

Ionic language

Ionic Greek was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic or Eastern dialect group of Ancient Greek.

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 E…
Herodotus of Halicarnassus asserts:[35]

all are Ionians who are of Athenian descent and keep the feast Apaturia.
He further explains:[36]

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,[37]
Naxos,[38] Kea[39] and Samos.[40] But they were not just from Athens:[41]

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:[42] Pellene, Aegira, Aegae, Bura,
Helice, Aegion, Rhype, Patrae, Phareae, Olenus, Dyme and Tritaeae. The most aboriginal Ionians
were of Cynuria:[43]

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

Strabo E…

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.[44]
 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 his successors—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.

Notes

1. Darius I, DNa inscription, Line 28 (https://www.livius.org/sources/content/achaemenid-royal-inscrip

tions/dna/?)

2. Apollodorus I, 7.3

3. Pausanias VII, 1.7

4. Kōnstantinos D. Paparrēgopulos, Historikai Pragmateiai - Volume 1, 1858

5. Robert S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 608 f.

6. "Indo-European Etymological Dictionary" (https://web.archive.org/web/20060927151807/http://ww

w.indoeuropean.nl/index2.html) . Leiden University, the IEEE Project. Archived from the original (h
ttp://www.indoeuropean.nl/index2.html) on 27 September 2006. 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.

7. "Indo-European Etymological Dictionary" (https://web.archive.org/web/20060927151807/http://ww

w.indoeuropean.nl/index2.html) . Leiden University, the IEEE Project. Archived from the original (h
ttp://www.indoeuropean.nl/index2.html) on 27 September 2006. In Pokorny's Indogermanisches
etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959), p. 1176.
 8. Partridge, Eric (1983). Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English: Ionian (https://
archive.org/details/originsshortetym0000part) . New York: Greenwich House. ISBN 0-517-41425-
2.

9. Bernal, Martin (1991). Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization: Volume I: The
Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985 (https://archive.org/details/blackathenaafroa00bern) .
New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. pp. 83–84 (https://archive.org/details/blackathenaa
froa00bern/page/83) . ISBN 0-8135-1277-8.

10. Nikolaev, Alexander S. (2006), "Ἰάoνες" (http://scholar.harvard.edu/nikolaev/publications/%E1%BC%

B0%CE%AC%CE%BF%CE%BD%CE%B5%CF%82) , Acta Linguistica Petropolitana, 2(1), pp. 100–115.

11. Ventris, Michael; John Chadwick (1973). Documents in Mycenaean Greek: Second Edition. Cambridge
University Press. pp. 547 in the "Glossary" under i-ja-wo-ne. ISBN 0-521-08558-6.

12. Homer. Iliad, Book XIII, Line 685.

13. Hes. fr. 10a.23 M-W: see Glare, P. G. W. (1996). Greek-English Leicon: Revised Supplement. Oxford
University Press. p. 155.

14. Book of Genesis, 10.2.

15. Bromiley, Geoffrey William (General Editor) (1994). The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:
Volume Two: Fully Revised: E-J: Javan. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 971.
ISBN 0-8028-3782-4.

16. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Iapetus"  (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britan

nica/Iapetus) . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 215.

17. Book of Isaiah 66.19.

18. Malkin, Irad (1998). The Return of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity. Berkeley: University of
California Press. p. 148. ISBN 0-520-21185-5.

19. Foley, John Miles (2005). A Companion to Ancient Epic (https://archive.org/details/companiontoancie

00fole) . Malden, Ma.: Blackwell Publishing. p. 294 (https://archive.org/details/companiontoancie0
0fole/page/n319) . ISBN 1-4051-0524-0.

20. Muss-Arnolt, William (1905). A Concise Dictionary of the Assyrian Language: Volume I: A-MUQQU:
Iamānu. Berlin; London; New York: Reuther & Reichard; Williams & Morgate; Lemcke & Büchner.
p. 360.
21. Kearsley, R.A. (1999). "Greeks Overseas in the 8th Century B.C.: Euboeans, Al Mina and Assyrian
Imperialism". In Tsetskhladze, Gocha R. (ed.). Ancient Greeks West and East (https://archive.org/det
ails/ancientgreekswes00tset) . Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill. pp. 109 (https://archive.org/details/anci
entgreekswes00tset/page/n131) –134. ISBN 90-04-10230-2. See pages 120-121.

22. Braun, T.F.R.G. (1925). "The Greeks in the Near East: IV. Assyrian Kings and the Greeks". In Boardman,
John; Hammond, N.G.L. (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History: III Part 3: The Expansion of the Greek
World Eighth to Sixth Centuries B.C. Cambridge University Press. pp. 14–24. ISBN 0-521-23447-6. See
page 17 for the quote.

23. Waters, Matt (2014). Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550–330 BCE (htt
ps://books.google.com/books?id=EjhEAgAAQBAJ&q=persians+ionia+yauna) . Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. p. 173. ISBN 978-1-10700-9-608.

24. Kent, Roland G. (1953). Old Persian: Grammar Texts Lexicon: Second Edition, Revised. New Haven,
Connecticut: American Oriental Society. p. 204. ISBN 0-940490-33-1.

25. Kent, p. 136.

26. Kosmin, Paul J. (2014). The Land of the Elephant Kings (https://books.google.com/books?id=9UWdAw
AAQBAJ&pg=PA57) . Harvard University Press. p. 57. ISBN 9780674728820.

27. Inscriptions of Asoka. New Edition by E. Hultzsch (https://archive.org/stream/InscriptionsOfAsoka.

NewEditionByE.Hultzsch/HultzschCorpusAsokaSearchable#page/n135/mode/2up) (in Sanskrit).
1925. p. 3.

28. Dagut, M. (1990). Prof. Jerusalem: Kiryat-Sefer Ltd. p. 294. ISBN 9651701722.

29. Bedrossian, Matthias (1985). New Dictionary Armenian-English. Beirut: Librairie du Liban. p. 515.

30. Wehr, Hans (1971). Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 1110.
ISBN 0879500018.

31. Rosenthal, Franz (2007). Encyclopedia of Islam Vol XI (2nd ed.). Leiden: Brill. p. 344.
ISBN 9789004161214.

32. Elihai, Yohanan (1985). Dictionnaire de l'arabe parlé palistinien Français-Arabe. Paris: Éditions
Klincksieck. p. 203. ISBN 2252025115.

33. Turner, Colin (2003). A Thematic Dictionary of Modern Persian. London: Routedge. p. 92.
ISBN 9780700704583.

34. Kornrumpf, H.-J. (1979). Langenscheidt's Universan Dictionary Turkish-English English-Turkish.

Berlin: Langenscheidt. ISBN 0340000422.
35. Herodotus. Histories. Book I, Chapter 147.

36. Herodotus. Histories. Book I, Chapter 143.

37. Herodotus. Histories. Book 8, Section 48.1.

38. Herodotus. Histories. Book 8, Section 46.3.

39. Herodotus. Histories. Book 8, Section 46.2.

40. Herodotus. Histories. Book 6, Section 22.3.

41. Herodotus. Histories. Book 7, Chapter 94.

42. Herodotus. Histories. Book 1, Section 145.1.

43. Herodotus. Histories. Book 8, Section 73.3.

44. Strabo. Geography. Book 8, Section 7.1.

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

Mair, Victor H. (2019), "Greeks in ancient Central Asia: the Ionians (https://languagelog.ldc.
upenn.edu/nll/?p=44747) ", Language Log, 20 October 2019. Informative scholarly
discussion.

Myres, John Linton (1911). "Ionians"  (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia

_Britannica/Ionians) . Encyclopædia Britannica. 14 (11th ed.). pp. 730–731. The reader
should be aware that, although useful, this article necessarily omits all of modern
scholarship.
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Last edited 25 days ago by Sinannamur