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Contributions to the History of Southern Aeolis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

W. M. Ramsay
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Asia Minor, interposed like a bridge between Europe and Asia, has been from time immemorial a battlefield between the Eastern and Western races. Across this bridge the arts, civilisation, and religion of the East had passed into Greece; and back over the same bridge they strove to pass beautified and elevated from Greece into Asia. The progress of the world has had its centre and motive power in the never-ceasing collision of Eastern and Western thought, which was thus produced in Asia Minor. One episode in the long conflict has been chosen by Herodotus as the subject of his prose epic: but the struggle did not stop at the point he thought. It has not yet ended, though it has long ceased to be of central importance in the world's history. For centuries after he wrote Greek influence continued to spread, unhindered, further and further into Asia: but as the Roman empire decayed, the East again became the stronger, and Asia Minor has continued under its undisputed influence almost up to the present day. Now the tide has again turned, and one can trace along the western coast the gradual extinction of the Oriental element. It does not retreat, it is not driven back by war: it simply dies out by a slow yet sure decay. It is the aim of this set of papers to throw some light on one stage in this contest, a stage probably the least known of all, the first attempts of the Greek element to establish itself in the country round the Hermus. Tradition has preserved to us little information about the first Greek settlements. The customary division into Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric colonists is not a sufficient one. Strabo clearly implies that there was a double Aeolic immigration when he says (p. 622) that Cyme founded thirty cities, and that it was not the first Aeolic settlement; in another passage (p. 582) he makes the northern colonists proceed by land through Thrace, the southern direct by sea to Cyme. I hope by an examination of the country and the situations, never as yet determined, of the minor towns, to add a little to the history of this Southern Aeolic immigration, in its first burst of prosperity, through the time when it was almost overwhelmed in the Lydian and Persian empires and was barely maintained by the strength of the Athenian confederacy, till it was finally merged in the stronger tide of Greek influence that set in with the victory of Alexander. More is known of Myrina, and still more of Cyme, than of any of the other towns: but both are omitted here, because it may be expected that considerable light will be thrown on the history of both by the excavations conducted on their sites by the French School of Athens. Till their results are published, it would be a waste of time to write of either city.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 2 , November 1881 , pp. 271 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1881

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References

page 273 note 1 Besides errors alluded to in the course of this article, I may mention the course assigned to the Nif Chai, or river of Nymphio, which really runs parallel to the Hermus as far as Magnesia before joining that river. Numberless errors occur in the accounts of Aeolis and of Phocaea in such hand-books as Forbiger, Smith, &c.; and the only important river between the Hermus and the Caicus is not marked in the maps.

page 273 note 2 I purposely refrain from ascribing each discovery to any particular person, as the honour is often claimed by more than one.

page 277 note 1 Kalabak is a village some distance inland among the mountains. I give the current explanation of the name, which is pronounced Kalábasseri.

page 278 note 1 I shall have occasion to speak of it later in connection with the site of Aegae.

page 278 note 2 Marked on Kiepert's large map, but not in the sketch map here given.

page 279 note 1 It is almost certain that both Cyme and Myrina were cities before the Greeks came. They are Amazon cities (Str. p. 623), that is, places of the Oriental religion of Artemis-Cybele; Myrina is the same word as Smyrna, the old name of Ephesos.

page 280 note 1 I find that a German scholar gets the same meaning by transposing the words: I have lost the reference to the place where this emendation has been published.

page 281 note 1 The corner would correspond exactly to the description quoted above from the Life of Homer. But the hill described in the text is evidently the important point, both from its natural strength and from the remains on it, and it is not far from the corner.

page 283 note 1 The references to the coins have profited by the criticisms of Professor Percy Gardner, whose invariable readiness to give assistance has done a great deal to make my work less defective than it would otherwise be.

page 285 note 1 I have not the opportunity of consulting Galen, De Bon. Mal. Succ. Cib. quoted by Rochette, Raoul, Hist. Col. Grecq, iii. 41.Google Scholar

page 285 note 2 Killa can hardly be the town of the Troad which Herodotus expressly exeludes from the sphere of the Aeolie cities. It and the other three are towns of the mainland that disappeared early.

page 286 note 1 The readings given in Mionnet are ΤΙΤΗΛΙΟΣ, ΠΙΤΝΑΙΟΣ, ΤΙΤΝΑΙΟΣ. It is obvious that the first two are false readings of the third.

page 286 note 2 A river god is also common on imperial coins of Phocaea. The name is not given, so far as I know, but it can hardly be any other than the Hermus.

page 286 note 3 I find that the writer in the Dictionary has merely followed Forbiger blindly. Forbiger also gives no authority. He probably follows the Peutinger Table, which places XXXIII. between the names of Cyme and Temnos. Now this must certainly be the complete distance between Cyme and Smyrna, and Temnos is not to be counted as a station.

page 289 note 1 Some of these remains seem Byzantine in style; the city certainly continued into that period.

page 295 note 1 M. Baltazzi, who has made a collection of the Aeolic coins, has told me that he could not get any coins of Aegae from Guzél Hissár.

page 296 note 1 Corrected by some editors to Αἰγαί.

page 296 note 2 Mr. Mühlhausen, engineer of the Smyrna and Cassaba Railway, told me of this inscribed stone, and gave me a guide to the place as well as to the site of Temnos. Mr. Barkshire of Smyrna has informed me by letter since the above was printed that he discovered the site of Temnos in 1877.

page 299 note 1 Compare Curtius, , Beitr. z. Gesch. Kleinasiens, p. 18Google Scholar, and Stark, , Niobe, p. 414.Google Scholar

page 306 note 1 See Journ. Hell. Stud. vol. i. pp. 68 ff.

page 307 note 1 Without the aid of this library and the courtesy with which it is placed at the disposal of all students, my time in Asia Minor would have been spent uselessly.