30 A Brief Recent History of the Ionians (§§142-151)

The history of the Ionians continues various favorite themes of the historian. The first is the splendid climate enjoyed by the twelve cities of Ionians who founded Panionium. All other climates suffer from some excess or deficiency; this climate is the mean. Thus one would think the felicity of the people to be as great as possible. Instead, there is a caveat: these people, despite the small area they occupy, speak four distinct dialects, all of which Herodotus enumerates. As language is a unifying element, we see that lying below the surface concord of the common meeting place and shrine Panionium are the seeds of discord.^[1]

One of the twelve cities, Miletus, stands apart (143) because it had an agreement with Cyrus. The island cities of the twelve were safe because the Persians had no navy, that of the Phoenicians not yet under Persian control. All the Greeks of this time, says Herodotus, were very weak, but the Ionians were the weakest of all. All the other Ionians, including the Athenians, were ashamed of the name “Ionian” and did not wish to be known as such (and the opprobrium of being an “Ionian” continued even into the historian’s time, he reports).^[2] But these cities take pride in the name and allow no one else to share in their holy place of Panionium, a restriction of little significance since no one but Smyrna ever requested the privilege. Here, too, then, is a reiteration of the disunity felt by the lonians. Why the name would be a source of shame is never explained, apart from the statement about their weakness.

Herodotus pauses to point out a parallel in that the Dorians, once united in six cities (in Herodotus’s day, five), admitted no other Dorians to their holy place and even barred those of their own cities that had committed an offense against it. He explains how the sixth city, Halicarnassus, was also barred from the Triopian festival. At the festival it was customary for the winner of a game to donate the bronze tripod that he won to the god. But a Halicarnassan, Agasicles, took his trophy home. For this offense his city was expelled from the association. Herodotus shows two things here: that the animosities and exclusiveness of the Greeks transcend ethnic solidarity and that awful consequences that can befall a whole city because of one man’s impropriety. The first lesson is one whose obverse tells a powerfully useful lesson for the Greeks: if they put aside their differences and unite, they could accomplish marvelous things, even overcome the Persian Empire. On the other hand, if Ionians cannot get along with Ionians and Dorians with Dorians, how could there ever be any peace?

Herodotus next discusses the reason for there being twelve cities of loni­ans. He finds the reason in tradition: as there had been twelve divisions of them when they had lived in the Peloponnesus, so there are twelve divisions now. He discards the possibility that these cities are more Ionian than others, and he tells how in fact some of these Ionians are of mixed blood. One of the cities, Caria, was founded by Athenians, but these men did not colonize the city with Athenian women; instead, they married native Carian women whose fathers, sons, and husbands they had killed. Herodotus adds that Carian women preserve the custom of not eating with their husbands in remembrance of the slaughter. The story carries to an even greater extreme the internal disunion of the Ionians: the families of the Carians suffer continuing hostility between man and wife, father and daughter. The term used for the slaughter, φόνος, suggests a great amount of cruelty. Herodotus does not refrain from pointing out that the Carians consider themselves to be the best born (γενναιότατοι) of the Ionians. Thus, the passage oozes irony: the best born are half-breeds, and their nobility is undermined by the atrocity by which they became Carians.^[3]

The excursus on unity and disunity continues (147): all are Ionians if they are of Athenian descent and keep the feast the Apaturia. Then a qualifier: the people of Colophon and of Ephesus are Ionians, even though they do not keep the feast. And they don’t keep it because of a murder. No details of the murder are given. It is enough to know that in all likelihood some private deed has resulted in the exclusion of entire cities.

Herodotus next briefly discusses the Aeolian cities, which number eleven now instead of twelve, Smyrna having been taken by the Ionians. The tale speaks well, I think, for the Aeolians and very badly for the Ioni­ ans. Some Ionians from Colophon, having been banished from their city because of city strife, were received kindly by Smyrna into the town. But when the people of Smyrna were outside the walls for a festival, the Colo­phonians shut the gates and took over the city. When all the Aeolians came to recover the city, they made an agreement that the people of Smyrna be allowed to take their possessions but the city remain in the hands of the Ionian Colophonians. The other eleven Aeolian cities then received the people of Smyrna. Here is a tale in stark contrast to those about the Ionians. The Aeolians embrace their fellows and receive them generously into their cities as citizens. The perfidious Colophonians are not received well even by their fellow Ionians, for, as Herodotus has mentioned, Ionian Smyrna was not allowed a share in the Panionium (143). Though he did not give an explanation earlier, we must understand the reason to be either that those who were victorious in the civil strife at Colophon did not want their former enemies to be admitted or that all the Ionians did not want to be tarnished by association with those who had so shamefully betrayed their benefactors.

Many of the Aeolians who lived on islands, the inhabitants of Lesbos and of Tenedos, like the Ionians who lived on islands, had nothing to fear. The rest decided in common to follow the lead of the Ionians. Herodotus seems to be stressing the greater unity of the Aeolians.