Clazomenae, City-State of

The Ionian cities, together with the capital cities of the islands of Chios and Samos, include Phocaea, Erythrae, Clazomenae, Teos, Lebedus, Colophon, Ephesus, Priene, Myus, and Miletus on the mainland.

It is probable that the original number of towns of the tenth and ninth centuries was far larger.

There may be much truth in the tradition that identifies Athens as the departure point of the Ionians.

The Ionians receive only passing mention in Homer's epics but in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, roughly corresponding in time to the first certain written reference to the Ionians by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (reigned 704-681 BCE), they are noted as the great and wealthy people who frequent the festival of Apollo at Delos.

These Greek Ionian cities form an exclusive religious league, the Panionion, …

…whose central shrine lies within the territory of Priene.

The cities of Ionia are pioneers of Greek civic (and probably constitutional) development in the eighth and seventh centuries.

They seem to have played little part in Greek maritime enterprise of the eighth century in the Mediterranean, but after 700 BCE, …

…Ionic seamen of Phocaea and …

…Miletus will become active in the Black Sea area and along the Mediterranean coasts of France and Spain, planting numerous colonies.

Miletus alone is said to have been the mother of ninety cities.

Among the Ionian cities, Miletus and …

…Ephesus (as the successor to Apasa, capital of the Luwian Late Bronze Age state of Arzawa) have by far the best claims to historical fame.

Ephesus enters history in the mid-seventh century BCE, when it is attacked by the Cimmerians. (Unlike its neighbor, Magnesia, it survives the attacks.)

Lydia reaches its commercial and political zenith under Alyattes, who attacks Clazomenae and subjects many inland regions to Lydian rule.

Representatives of Tissaphernes and of Pharnabazus, hereditary satrap of Dascylium in Hellespontine Phrygia, as well as ambassadors from Chios, …

…Clazomenae, and …

…Erythrae, invite the Spartans to carry the war across to the eastern Aegean.

This Sparta does, and in some long, drawn-out diplomacy, it agrees to abandon all claims to Anatolia as part of a deal for money and a fleet.

Artaxerxes secures the King's Peace (also called the Peace of Antalcidas) in 387, which asserts Persia's ancestral claim to Ionia and specifies that Asia, including Clazomenae, is included because Athens had interfered there and because its status—whether it is an island or part of the mainland—is unclear. (It is in fact a peninsular site.)