There existed at the commencement of historical Greece, in 776 B.C., besides the Ionians in Attica and the Cyclades, twelve Ionian cities of note on or near the coast of Asia Minor, besides a few others less important. Enumerated from south to north, they stand,—MilÊtus, MyÛs, PriÊnÊ, Samos, Ephesus, KolophÔn, Lebedus, TeÔs, ErythrÆ, Chios, KlazomenÆ, PhÔkÆa.

That these cities, the great ornament of the Ionic name, were founded by emigrants from European Greece, there is no reason to doubt. How, or when, they were founded, we have no history to tell us; the legend, which has already been set forth in a preceding chapter, gives us a great event called the Ionic migration, referred by chronologists to one special year, one hundred and forty years after the Trojan war. This massive grouping belongs to the character of legend,—the Æolic and Ionic emigrations, as well as the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, are each invested with unity, and imprinted upon the imagination as the results of a single great impulse. But such is not the character of the historical colonies: when we come to relate the Italian and Sicilian emigrations, it will appear that each colony has its own separate nativity and causes of existence. In the case of the Ionic emigration, this large scale of legendary conception is more than usually conspicuous, since to that event is ascribed the foundation or repeopling both of the Cyclades and of the Asiatic Ionian cities.

EuripidÊs treats Ion,[288] the son of Kreusa by Apollo, as the planter of these latter cities: but the more current form of the legend assigns that honor to the sons of Kodrus, two of whom are especially named, corresponding to the two greatest of the ten continental Ionic cities: Androklus, as founder of Ephesus, Neileus of MilÊtus. These two towns are both described as founded directly from Athens. The others seem rather to be separate settlements, neither consisting of Athenians, nor emanating from Athens, but adopting the characteristic Ionic festival of the Apaturia, and, in part at least, the Ionic tribes,—and receiving princes from the Kodrid families at Ephesus or MilÊtus, as a condition of being admitted into the Pan-Ionic confederate festival. The poet Mimnermus ascribed the foundation of his native city KolophÔn to emigrants from Pylus, in Peloponnesus, under AndrÆmÔn: TeÔs was settled by MinyÆ of Orchomenus, under Athamas: KlazomenÆ by settlers from KleÔnÆ and Phlius, PhÔkÆa, by Phocians, PriÊnÊ in large portion by Kadmeians from Thebes. And with regard to the powerful islands of Chios and Samos, it does not appear that their native authors,—the Chian poet Ion, or the Samaian poet Asius,—ascribed to them a population emanating from Athens: Pausanias could not make out from the poems of Ion how it happened that Chios came to form a part of the Ionic federation.[289] Herodotus, especially, dwells upon the number of Grecian tribes and races, who contributed to supply the population of the twelve Ionic cities,—MinyÆ, from Orchomenus, Kadmeians, Dryopians, Phocians, Molossians, Arkadian Pelasgians, Dorians from Epidaurus, and “several other sections” of Greeks. Moreover, he particularly singles out the Milesians, as claiming for themselves the truest Ionic blood, and as having started from the prytaneium, at Athens; thus plainly implying his belief that the majority, at least, of the remaining settlers did not take their departure from the same hearth.[290]

But the most striking information which Herodotus conveys to us is, the difference of language, or dialect, which marked these twelve cities. MilÊtus, MyÛs, and PriÊnÊ, all situated on the soil of the Karians, had one dialect: Ephesus, KolophÔn, Lebedus, TeÔs, KlazomenÆ, and PhÔkÆa, had a dialect common to all, but distinct from that of the three preceding: Chios and ErythrÆ exhibited a third dialect, and Samos, by itself, a fourth. Nor does the historian content himself with simply noting such quadruple variety of speech; he employs very strong terms to express the degree of dissimilarity.[291] The testimony of Herodotus as to these dialects is, of course, indisputable.

Instead of one great Ionic emigration, then, the statements above cited conduct us rather to the supposition of many separate and successive settlements, formed by the Greeks of different sections, mingling with and modified by preËxisting Lydians and Karians, and subsequently allying themselves with MilÊtus and Ephesus into the so-called Ionic amphiktyony. As a condition of this union, they are induced to adopt among their chiefs princes of the Kodrid gens or family; who are called sons of Kodrus, but who are not for that reason to be supposed necessarily contemporary with Androklus or Neileus.

The chiefs selected by some of the cities are said to have been Lykians,[292] of the heroic family of Glaukus and Bellerophon: in some causes, the Kodrids and the Glaukids were chiefs conjointly. Respecting the dates of these separate settlements, we cannot give any account, for they lie beyond the commencement of authentic history: there is ground for believing that most of them existed for some time previous to 776 B.C., but at what date the federative solemnity uniting the twelve cities was commenced, we do not know.

The account of Herodotus shows us that these colonies were composed of mixed sections of Greeks,—an important circumstance in estimating their character. Such was usually the case more or less in respect to all emigrations, and hence the establishments thus planted contracted at once, generally speaking, both more activity and more instability than was seen among those Greeks who remained at home, and among whom the old habitual routine had not been counterworked by any marked change of place or of social relations. For in a new colony it became necessary to adopt fresh classifications of the citizens, to range them together in fresh military and civil divisions, and to adopt new characteristic sacrifices and religious ceremonies as bonds of union among all the citizens conjointly. At the first outset of a colony, moreover, there were inevitable difficulties to be surmounted, which imposed upon its leading men the necessity of energy and forethought,—more especially in regard to maritime affairs, on which not only their connection with the countrymen whom they had left behind, but also their means of establishing advantageous relations with the population of the interior, depended. At the same time, the new arrangements indispensable among the colonists were far from working always harmoniously: dissension and partial secessions were not unfrequent occurrences. And what has been called the mobility of the Ionic race, as compared with the Doric, is to be ascribed in a great measure to this mixture of races and external stimulus arising out of expatriation: for there is no trace of it in Attica anterior to Solon; and on the other hand, the Doric colonies of Korkyra and Syracuse exhibit a population not less excitable than the Ionic towns generally,[293] and much more so than the Ionic colony of Massalia. The remarkable commercial enterprise, which will be seen to characterize MilÊtus, Samos, and PhokÆa, belongs but little to anything connected with the Ionic temperament.

All the Ionic towns, except KlazomenÆ and PhokÆa, are represented to have been founded on some preËxisting settlements of Karians, Lelegians, Kretans, Lydians, or Pelasgians.[294] In some cases these previous inhabitants were overcome, slain, or expelled; in others they were accepted as fellow-residents, and the Grecian cities thus established acquired a considerable tinge of Asiatic customs and feelings. What is related by Herodotus respecting the first establishment of Neileus and his emigrants at MilÊtus is in this point of view remarkable. They took out with them no women from Athens (the historian says), but found wives in the Karian women of the place, whose husbands and fathers they overcame and put to death; and the women, thus violently seized, manifested their repugnance by taking a solemn oath among themselves that they would never eat with their new husbands, nor ever call them by their personal names. This same pledge they imposed upon their daughters; but how long the practice lasted, we are not informed: it rather seems from the language of the historian that traces of it were visible even in his day in the family customs of the Milesians. The population of this greatest of the Ionic towns must thus have been half of Karian breed. It is to be presumed that what is true of Neileus and his companions would be found true, also, respecting most of the maritime colonies of Greece, and that the vessels which took them out would be scantily provided with women. But on this point, unfortunately, we are left without information.

The worship of Apollo DidymÆus, at BranchidÆ, near MilÊtus,—that of Artemis, near Ephesus,—and that of the Apollo Klarius, near KolophÔn,—seems to have existed among the native Asiatic population before the establishment of either of these three cities. To maintain these preËxisting local rites was not less congenial to the feelings, than beneficial to the interests, of the Greeks: all the three establishments acquired increased celebrity under Ionic administration, and contributed in their turn to the prosperity of the towns to which they were attached. MilÊtus, MyÛs, and PriÊnÊ were situated on or near the productive plain of the river MÆander; while Ephesus was, in like manner, planted near the mouth of the KaÏster, thus immediately communicating with the productive breadth of land separating Mount TmÔlus on the north from Mount MessÔgis on the south, through which that river runs: KolophÔn is only a very few miles north of the same river. Possessing the best means of communication with the interior, these three towns seem to have thriven with greater rapidity than the rest; and they, together with the neighboring island of Samos, constituted in early times the strength of the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony. The situation of the sacred precinct of PoseidÔn (where this festival was celebrated), on the north side of the promontory of MykalÊ, near PriÊnÊ, and between Ephesus and MilÊtus, seems to show that these towns formed the primitive centre to which the other Ionian settlements became gradually aggregated. For it was by no means a centrical site with reference to all the twelve; so that ThalÊs of MilÊtus,—who at a subsequent period recommended a more intimate political union between the twelve Ionic towns, and the establishment of a common government to manage their collective affairs,—indicated TeÔs,[295] and not PriÊnÊ, as the suitable place for it. Moreover, it seems that the Pan-Ionic festival,[296] though still formally continued, had lost its importance before the time of ThucydidÊs, and had become practically superseded by the more splendid festival of the Ephesia, near Ephesus, where the cities of Ionia found a more attractive place of meeting.

An island close adjoining to the coast, or an outlying tongue of land connected with the continent by a narrow isthmus, and presenting some hill sufficient for an acropolis, seems to have been considered as the most favorable situation for Grecian colonial settlement. To one or other of these descriptions most of the Ionic cities, conform.[297] The city of MilÊtus at the height of its power had four separate harbors, formed probably by the aid of the island of LadÊ and one or two islets which lay close off against it: the Karian or Kretan establishment, which the Ionic colonists found on their arrival and conquered, was situated on an eminence overhanging the sea, and became afterwards known by the name of Old MilÊtus, at a time when the new Ionic town had been extended down to the water-side and rendered maritime.[298] The territory of this important city seems to have comprehended both the southern promontory called Poseidium and the greater part of the northern promontory of MykalÊ,[299] reaching on both sides of the river MÆander: the inconsiderable town of MyÛs[300] on the southern bank of the MÆander, an offset seemingly formed by the secession of some Milesian malcontents under a member of the Neleid gens named KydrÊlus, maintained for along time its autonomy, but was at length absorbed into the larger unity of MilÊtus; its swampy territory having been rendered uninhabitable by a plague of gnats. PriÊnÊ acquired an importance greater than naturally belonged to it, by its immediate vicinity to the holy Pan-Ionic temple and its function of administering the sacred rites,[301]—a dignity which it probably was only permitted to enjoy in consequence of the jealousies of its greater neighbors MilÊtus, Ephesus, and Samos.[302] The territories of these Grecian cities seem to have been interspersed with Karian villages, probably in the condition of subjects.

It is rare to find a genuine Greek colony established at any distance from the sea; but the two Asiatic towns called MagnÊsia form exceptions to this position,—one situated on the south side of the MÆander, or rather on the river LethÆus, which runs into the MÆander; the other more northerly, adjoining to the Æolic Greeks, on the northern declivity of Mount Sipylus, and near to the plain of the river Harmus. The settlement of both these towns dates before the period of history: the tale[303] which we read affirms them to be settlements from the MagnÊtes in Thessaly, formed by emigrants who had first passed into KrÊte, under the orders of the Delphian oracle, and next into Asia, where they are said to have extricated the Ionic and Æolic colonists, then recently arrived, from a position of danger and calamity. By the side of this story, which can neither be verified nor contradicted, it is proper to mention the opinion of Niebuhr, that both these towns of MagnÊsia are remnants of a primitive Pelasgic population, akin to, but not emigrants from, the MagnÊtes of Thessaly,—Pelasgians whom he supposes to have occupied both the valley of the Hermus and that of the KaÏster, anterior to the Æolic and Ionic migrations. In support of this opinion, it may be stated that there were towns bearing the Pelasgic name of Larissa, both near the Hermus and near the MÆander: MenekratÊs of ElÆa considered the Pelasgians as having once occupied most part of that coast; and O. MÜller even conceives the Tyrrhenians to have been Pelasgians from Tyrrha, a town in the interior of Lydia south of TmÔlus. The point is one upon which we have not sufficient evidence to advance beyond conjecture.[304]

Of the Ionic towns, with which our real knowledge of Asia Minor begins, MilÊtus[305] was the most powerful; and its celebrity was derived not merely from its own wealth and population, but also from the extraordinary number of its colonies, established principally in the Propontis and Euxine, and amounting, as we are told by some authors, to not less than seventy-five or eighty. Respecting these colonies I shall speak presently, in treating of the general colonial expansion of Greece during the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.: at present, it is sufficient to notice that the islands of Ikarus and Lerus,[306] not far from Samos and the Ionic coast generally, were among the places planted with Milesian settlers.

The colonization of Ephesus by Androklus appears to be connected with the Ionic occupation of Samos, so far as the confused statements which we find enable us to discern. Androklus is said to have lingered upon that island for a long time, until the oracle vouchsafed to indicate to him what particular spot to occupy on the continent; at length the indication was given, and he planted his colonists at the fountain of HypelÆon and on a portion of the hill of KorÊssus, within a short distance of the temple and sanctuary of Artemis; whose immediate inhabitants he respected and received as brethren, while he drove away for the most part the surrounding Lelegians and Lydians. The population of the new town of Ephesus was divided into three tribes,—the pre-existing inhabitants, or Ephesians proper, the Bennians, and the EuÔnymeis, so named (we are told) from the deme Euonymus in Attica.[307] So much did the power of Androklus increase, that he was enabled to conquer Samos, and to expel from it the prince LeÔgorus: of the retiring Samians, a part are said to have gone to Samothrace and there established themselves, while another portion acquired possession of MarathÊsium near Ephesus, on the adjoining continent of Asia Minor, from whence, after a short time, they recovered their island, compelling Androklus to return to Ephesus. It seems, however, that in the compromise and treaty which ensued, they yielded possession of MarathÊsium to Androklus,[308] and confined themselves to AnÆa, a more southerly district farther removed from the Ephesian settlement, and immediately opposite to the island of Samos. Androklus is said to have perished in a battle fought for the defence of PriÊnÊ, which town he had come to aid against an attack of the Karians. His dead body was brought from the field and buried near the gates of Ephesus, where the tomb was yet shown during the days of Pausanias; but a sedition broke out against his sons after him, and the malcontents strengthened their party by inviting reinforcements from TeÔs and Karina. The struggle which ensued terminated in the discontinuance of the kingly race and the establishment of a republican government,—the descendants of Androklus being allowed to retain both considerable honorary privileges and the hereditary priesthood of the Eleusinian DÊmÊtÊr. The newly-received inhabitants were enrolled in two new tribes, making in all five tribes, which appear to have existed throughout the historical times at Ephesus.[309] It appears too that a certain number of fugitive proprietors from Samos found admission among the Ephesians and received the freedom of the city; and the part of the city in which they resided acquired the name of Samorna, or Smyrna, by which name it was still known in the time of the satirical poet HippÔnax, about 530 B.C.[310]

Such are the stories which we find respecting the infancy of the Ionic Ephesus. The fact of its increase and of its considerable acquisitions of territory, at the expense of the neighboring Lydians,[311] is at least indisputable. It does not appear to have been ever very powerful or enterprising at sea, and few maritime colonies owed their origin to its citizens; but its situation near the mouth and the fertile plain of the KaÏster was favorable both to the multiplication of its inland dependencies and to its trade with the interior. A despot named Pythagoras is said to have subverted by stratagem the previous government of the town, at some period before Cyrus, and to have exercised power for a certain time with great cruelty.[312] It is worthy of remark, that we find no trace of the existence of the four Ionic tribes at Ephesus; and this, when coupled with the fact that neither Ephesus nor KolophÔn solemnized the peculiar Ionic festival of the Apaturia, is one among other indications that the Ephesian population had little community of race with Athens, though the oekist may have been of heroic Athenian family. Guhl attempts to show, on mistaken grounds, that the Greek settlers at Ephesus were mostly of Arkadian origin.[313]

KolophÔn, about fifteen miles north of Ephesus, and divided from the territory of the latter by the precipitous mountain range called GallÊsium, though a member of the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony, seems to have had no Ionic origin: it recognized neither an Athenian oekist nor Athenian inhabitants. The Kolophonian poet Mimnermus tells us that the oekist of the place was the Pylian AndrÆmÔn, and that the settlers were Pylians from Peloponnesus. “We quitted (he says) Pylus, the city of Neleus, and passed in our vessels to the much-desired Asia. There with the insolence of superior force, and employing from the beginning cruel violence, we planted ourselves in the tempting KolophÔn.”[314] This description of the primitive Kolophonian settlers, given with Homeric simplicity, forcibly illustrates the account given by Herodotus of the proceedings of Neileus at MilÊtus. The establishment of AndrÆmÔn must have been effected by force, and by the dispossession of previous inhabitants, leaving probably their wives and daughters as a prey to the victors. The city of KolophÔn seems to have been situated about two miles inland, but it had a fortified port called Notium, not joined to it by long walls as the PeirÆeus was to Athens, but completely distinct. There were times in which this port served the Kolophonians as a refuge, when their upper town was assailed by Persians from the interior; but the inhabitants of Notium occasionally manifested inclinations to act as a separate community, and dissensions thus occurred between them and the people in KolophÔn,[315]—so difficult was it in the Greek mind to keep up a permanent feeling of political amalgamation beyond the circle of the town walls.

It is much to be regretted that nothing beyond a few lines of Mimnermus, and nothing at all of the long poem of XenophanÊs (composed seemingly near a century after Mimnermus) on the foundation of KolophÔn, has reached us. The short statements of Pausanias omit all notice of that violence which the native Kolophonian poet so emphatically signalizes in his ancestors: they are derived more from the temple legends of the adjoining Klarian Apollo and from morsels of epic poetry referring to that holy place, which connected itself with the worship of Apollo in KrÊte, at Delphi, and at Thebes. The old Homeric poem, called ThebaÏs, reported that MantÔ, daughter of the Theban prophet Teiresias, had been presented to Apollo at Delphi as a votive offering by the victorious epigoni: the god directed her to migrate to Asia, and she thus arrived at Klarus, where she married the Kretan Rhakius. The offspring of this marriage was the celebrated prophet Mopsus, whom the Hesiodic epic described as having gained a victory in prophetic skill over Kalchas; the latter having come to Klarus after the Trojan war in company with Amphilochus son of Amphiaraus.[316] Such tales evince the early importance of the temple and oracle of Apollo at Klarus, which appears to have been in some sort an emanation from the great sanctuary of BranchidÆ near MilÊtus; for we are told that the high priest of Klarus was named by the Milesians.[317] Pausanias states that Mopsus expelled the indigenous Karians, and established the city of KolophÔn; and that the Ionic settlers under PromÊthus and DamasichthÔn, sons of Kodrus, were admitted amicably as additional inhabitants:[318] a story probably emanating from the temple, and very different from that of the Kolophonian townsmen in the time of Mimnermus. It seems evident that not only the Apollinic sanctuary at Klarus, but also the analogous establishments on the south of Asia Minor at PhasÊlis, Mallus, etc., had their own foundation legends (apart from those of the various bands of emigrant settlers), in which they connected themselves by the best thread which they could devise with the epic glories of Greece.[319]

Passing along the Ionian coast in a north-westerly direction from KolophÔn, we come first to the small but independent Ionic settlement of Lebedus—next, to TeÔs, which occupies the southern face of a narrow isthmus, KlazomenÆ being placed on the northern: this isthmus, a low narrow valley of about six miles across, forms the eastern boundary of a very considerable peninsula, containing the mountainous and woody regions called Mimas and KÔrykus. TeÔs is said to have been first founded by Orchomenian MinyÆ under Athamas, and to have received afterwards by consent various swarms of settlers, Orchomenians and others, under the Kodrid leaders Apoekus, Nauklus, and Damasus.[320] The valuable Teian inscriptions published in the large collection of Boeckh, while they mention certain names and titles of honor which connect themselves with this Orchomenian origin, reveal to us at the same time some particulars respecting the internal distribution of the Teian citizens. The territory of the town was distributed amongst a certain number of towers, to each of which corresponded a symmory or section of the citizens, having its common altar and sacred rites, and often its heroic eponymus. How many in number the tribes of TeÔs were, we do not know: the name of the Geleontes, one of the four old Ionic tribes, is preserved in an inscription; but the rest, both as to names and number, are unknown. The symmories or tower-fellowships of TeÔs seem to be analogous to the phratries of ancient Athens,—forming each a factitious kindred, recognizing a common mythical ancestor, and bound together by a communion at once religious and political. The individual name attached to each tower is in some cases Asiatic rather than Hellenic, indicating in TeÔs the mixture not merely of Ionic and Æolic, but also of Karian or Lydian inhabitants, of which Pausanias speaks.[321] GerrhÆidÆ, or CherrÆidÆ, the port on the west side of the town of TeÔs, had for its eponymous hero GerÊs the Boeotian, who was said to have accompanied the Kodrids in their settlement.

The worship of AthÊnÊ Polias at ErythrÆ may probably be traceable to Athens, and that of the Tyrian HÊraklÊs (of which Pausanias recounts a singular legend) would seem to indicate an intermixture of Phoenician inhabitants. But the close neighborhood of ErythrÆ to the island of Chios, and the marked analogy of dialect which Herodotus[322] attests between them, show that the elements of the population must have been much the same in both. The Chian poet IÔn mentioned the establishment of Abantes from Euboea in his native island, under Amphiklus, intermixed with the preËxisting Karians: Hektor, the fourth descendant from Amphiklus, was said to have incorporated this island in the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony. It is to PherekydÊs that we owe the mention of the name of Egertius, as having conducted a miscellaneous colony into Chios; and it is through Egertius (though IÔn, the native poet, does not appear to have noticed him) that this logographer made out the connection between the Chians and the other group of Kodrid settlements.[323] In ErythrÆ, KnÔpus or Kleopus is noted as the Kodrid oekist, and as having procured for himself, partly by force, partly by consent, the sovereignty of the preËxisting settlement of mixed inhabitants. The ErythrÆan historian Hippias recounted how KnÔpus had been treacherously put to death on ship-board, by OrtygÊs and some other false adherents; who, obtaining some auxiliaries from the Chian king Amphiklus, made themselves masters of ErythrÆ and established in it an oppressive oligarchy. They maintained the government, with a temper at once licentious and cruel, for some time, admitting none but a chosen few of the population within the walls of the town; until at length HippotÊs the brother of KnÔpus, arriving from without at the head of some troops, found sufficient support from the discontents of the ErythrÆans to enable him to overthrow the tyranny. Overpowered in the midst of a public festival, OrtygÊs and his companions were put to death with cruel tortures and the same tortures were inflicted upon their innocent wives and children,[324]—a degree of cruelty which would at no time have found place amidst a community of European Greeks: even in the murderous party dissensions of Korkyra during the Peloponnesian war, death was not aggravated by preliminary tortures. Aristotle[325] mentions the oligarchy of the Basilids as having existed in ErythrÆ, and as having been overthrown by a democratical revolution, although prudently managed: to what period this is to be referred we do not know.

KlazomenÆ is said to have been founded by a wandering party, either of Ionians or of inhabitants from KleonÆ and Phlius, under Parphorus or Paralus: and PhÔkÆa by a band of Phokians under PhilogenÊs and Damon. This last-mentioned town was built at the end of a peninsula which formed part of the territory of the Æolic KymÊ: the KymÆans were induced to cede it amicably, and to permit the building of the new town. The Phokians asked and obtained permission to enrol themselves in the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony; but the permission is said to have been granted only on condition that they should adopt members of the Kodrid family as their oekists; and they accordingly invited from ErythrÆ and TeÔs three chiefs belonging to that family or gens,—DeoetÊs, Periklus, and Abartus.[326]

Smyrna, originally an Æolic colony, established from KymÊ fell subsequently into the hands of the Ionians of KolophÔn. A party of exiles from the latter city, expelled during an intestine dispute, were admitted by the SmyrnÆans into their city,—a favor which they repaid by shutting the gates and seizing the place for themselves, at a moment when the SmyrnÆans had gone forth in a body to celebrate a religious festival. The other Æolic towns sent auxiliaries for the purpose of reËstablishing their dispossessed brethren; but they were compelled to submit to an accommodation, whereby the Ionians retained possession of the town, restoring to the prior inhabitants all their movables. These exiles were distributed as citizens among the other Æolic cities.[327]

Smyrna after this became wholly Ionian; and the inhabitants in later times, if we may judge by AristeidÊs the rhetor, appear to have forgotten the Æolic origin of their town, though the fact is attested both by Herodotus and by Mimnermus.[328] At what time the change took place, we do not know; but Smyrna appears to have become Ionian before the celebration of the 23d Olympiad, when Onomastus the SmyrnÆan gained the prize.[329] Nor have we information as to the period at which the city was received as a member into the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony, for the assertion of Vitruvius is obviously inadmissible, that it was admitted at the instance of Attalus, king of Pergamus, in place of a previous town called MelitÊ, excluded by the rest for misbehavior.[330] As little can we credit the statement of Strabo, that the city of Smyrna was destroyed by the Lydian kings, and that the inhabitants were compelled to live in dispersed villages until its restoration by Antigonus. A fragment of Pindar, which speaks of “the elegant city of the SmyrnÆans,” indicates that it must have existed in his time.[331] The town of ErÆ, near Lebedus, though seemingly autonomous,[332] was not among the contributors to the Pan-Ionian: MyonnÊsus seems to have been a dependency of TeÔs, as Pygela and MarathÊsium were of Ephesus. Notium, after its recolonization by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, seems to have remained separate from and independent of KolophÔn: at least the two are noticed by Skylax as distinct towns.[333]