Introduction

The first decade of the second century BCE saw a showdown between the Seleucid king Antiochus III, so called Antiochus Megas, and a Roman Republic fresh off its victory in the Second Punic War. The Romans defeated Antiochus in battle after battle, all the while echoing generations of Hellenistic warlords and kings in declaring that their armies in the Aegean were the guarantors of Greek liberty (Livy 34.57). Thus, they stipulated, Antiochus had to accept the freedom and autonomy of all Greek poleis as a condition for peace. Rome had won the war and Antiochus had little leverage, but the negotiations leading up to the Treaty of Apamea in 188 stretched out anyway. At one point, the historian Appian tells us, Antiochus relented, announcing to the Romans that he would relinquish his claim over the European Greeks, as well as the Rhodians, Byzantines, Cyzicaeans, and all the other Greeks, “but he would not release the Aeolians and the Ionians, since they had long been accustomed to obey the barbarian kings of Asia” (Syr. 12.1).¹

This is a curious passage. Antiochus sets himself as the heir to the non-Greek kings in an ill-fated gambit to preserve part of his realm, but his explanation for wanting to keep control over Ionia—that the region’s history meant that it forfeited the right to autonomy—provides an insight into the consensus opinion about Ionia.

In some ways, Antiochus’ assessment is astute. Ionia had become subject to “the barbarian kings of Asia” at least by the early sixth century BCE, and that subordinate relationship had continued throughout the Classical and early Hellenistic periods, regardless of formal declarations of autonomy. However, there are also two significant problems with Antiochus’ statement. First, Ionia was subordinate not only to barbarian kings, but also to Greek poleis and Macedonian kings. Second, although Antiochus referred to the Ionians as accustomed to obedience, they were anything but.

Histories of Classical Greece tend to follow well-trod paths. A series of political and military events like the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars mark the trail and point out a standard set of sights. Athens is well represented, for reasons of evidence as much as anything, and puncturing the Spartan mirage has done little to blunt popular fascination, while Thebes and Macedonia make grand appearances in the fourth century. And yet, if one were to complete this metaphor, most of Greek history takes place elsewhere in the forest and only obliquely intersects with the usual paths.

That is, the story of ancient Greece is not the history of Athens or Sparta or Macedonia, but the history of more than a thousand independent poleis scattered across the breadth of the Mediterranean and Black Seas bound by language, culture, genealogy, and Panhellenic institutions that together created an imagined community of “Greeks.”² Recent scholarship has begun to reflect this reality. The recent wave of regional histories,³ polis histories,⁴ and studies that either evaluate the Greek world at the intersection of poleis or set Greek history in light of its interactions with non-Greeks⁵ has dramatically enriched our understanding of ancient Greece. To date, though, there has not been a dedicated study of Classical Ionia.

My aim in this book is to use Ionia to offer a new perspective on Classical Greece. Consisting of twelve poleis on and immediately off the coast of Asia Minor, Ionia straddled the border between the spheres claimed by Athens and Persia, which made it central to the imperial conflicts of the period. It is tempting to present the Ionian poleis as the prizes of imperial competition,⁶ but closer inspection reveals that this characterization is deeply misleading. The Ionians were active partners in the imperial endeavor, even as imperial competition constrained local decision-making and exacerbated local and regional tensions.

The remainder of this chapter offers an introduction to Ionia before sketch-ing its early history down to the revolt of 499–494 BCE. Scholarship on Archaic Ionia has long used the Persian suppression of this revolt as the lens through which to interpret the region’s history.⁷ Certainly, the revolt marked a traumatic rupture in the history of Ionia, but this approach both overrates Ionia’s importance in the earlier developments of Greek history and underrates its continued importance through the Classical period. The Ionian revolt did not conclude a story so much as turn over a new page.

The Geography of Ionia

“Ionia” and “Ionian” are terms with multifarious definitions. Yauna—Ionian—was what much of the world called Greeks in antiquity, and common meanings range from ethnic terminology, a linguistic dialect, and an architectural style to a general label for Greeks who lived on the coast of Asia Minor between Sinope in the north and Phaselis in the south. However, Ionia also had a concrete referent from the sixth century: the region inhabited by citizens of poleis that belonged to the Panionion and whose ancestors had participated in the Ionian Migration at some point in the distant past (Hdt. 1.142; see below, “The Poleis of Ionia”).⁸

Herodotus claimed that Ionia was the best land in Asia, but it makes little sense as a discrete region.⁹ Two mountainous horst ridges bisect Ionia from east to west, forming peninsulas that jut into the sea in the form of Mount Mimas (modern Çeşme) in the north and Mount Mycale (modern Samsun Dağı or Dilek Dağları) in the south.¹⁰ Large rivers snaked through the valleys between the ridges, carrying alluvium from far inland Anatolia that led to rapid silting of Ionian harbors even while creating fertile farmland and fishing grounds.¹¹ In the south, the Maeander River (modern Büyük Menderes), from which we get the English word “meander,” emptied into the Aegean Sea near Miletus, Myus, and Priene, while, on the other side of Mount Mycale, the Cayster River (modern Küçük Menderes) passed near Ephesus.¹² Beyond Mount Mimas to the north, the Hermus River (modern Gediz) by Smyrna ostensibly marked the divide between Ionia and Aeolis.¹³

These ridges facilitated east-west communication by allowing people to move along the peaks, but they interrupted north-south movement.¹⁴ Herodotus’ description of Ionia clearly reflects this fragmentation (1.142.3–4):

They do not regularly use the same tongue but have four dialects. Miletus lies furthest to the south, and afterward Myus and Priene. These reside adjacent to Caria with their own dialect, while those adjacent Lydia, Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedus, Teos, Clazomenae, and Phocaea, those poleis share a dialect among them that is distinct from the former one.

γλῶσσαν δὲ οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν οὗτοι νενομίκασι, ἀλλὰ τρόπους τέσσερας παραγωγέων. Μίλητος μὲν αὐτέων πρώτη κέεται πόλις πρὸς μεσαμβρίην, μετὰ δὲ Μυοῦς τε καὶ Πριήνη. αὗται μὲν ἐν τῇ Καρίῃ κατοίκηνται κατὰ ταὐτὰ διαλεγόμεναι σφίσι, αἵδε δὲ ἐν τῇ Λυδίῃ, Ἔφεσος Κολοφὼν Λέβεδος Τέως Κλαζομεναὶ Φώκαια: αὗται δὲ αἱ πόλιες τῇσι πρότερον λεχθείσῃσι ὁμολογέουσι κατὰ γλῶσσαν οὐδέν, σφισι δὲ ὁμοφωνέουσι.

Herodotus goes on to say that Erythrae shared a language with the large island polis of Chios, while the Samos had a unique dialect. In addition to these divisions, there were numerous smaller islands such as Milesian Leros, Halonnesus in the territory of Erythrae, and the polis Clazomenae that has since been joined to the mainland.

These distinctions lead the archaeologist Alan Greaves to characterize the sea that surrounded, separated, and connected the poleis as the medium that allowed Ionia to be considered a single region.¹⁵ But the sea around Ionia was dangerous. Strong currents run through the region, particularly in the straights between the islands and the peninsulas, and rocky coasts created dangers not only from Aegean storms, but also from the pirates.¹⁶ And yet most Ionian poleis consisted of a patchwork of noncontiguous territories, scattered across the mountains, islands, and valleys, that contributed to political fragmentation.¹⁷ Even the two large island poleis, Samos and Chios, had peraeae, or holdings on the Anatolian mainland. By the same token, the sea held Ionia together and contributed to its prosperity since it was exactly here that one of the principal north-south maritime routes turned west to cross the Aegean.¹⁸

The Poleis of Ionia

“To think of Ionia is to think of cities,” writes Alan Greaves.¹⁹ He goes on to explain that he means cities in the modern sense of an urban center (the Greek ἄστυ) rather than πόλις. The latter term is often glossed as “city,” but was inclusive of its citizens (demos), the urban center, and the territory (chora). While Greaves is correct that it is impossible to think of Ephesus without drawing to mind the spectacular facade of the Library of Celsus, it is not those urban centers, but the twelve member poleis of the Panionion, that sit at the center of this study.²⁰

The membership rolls of the Panionion did not remain entirely stable, but Herodotus provides the canonical list from north to south: Phocaea, Clazomenae, Erythrae, Chios, Teos, Lebedus, Colophon, Ephesus, Samos, Priene, Myus, and Miletus (1.142). A thirteenth polis, Smyrna, requested membership in the Archaic period but likely only received admission in the Hellenistic.²¹ These poleis lay scattered across the geographical landscape but maintained a sense of collective identity through participation in the Panionion on Mount Mycale, which was established after a common war against Melie.²² However, this mem-ory of cooperation did little to blunt the rivalries. In fact, Naoíse Mac Sweeney characterizes the Panionion as a “fight club” because “inter-Ionian competition became not just a sideshow—it was the fundamental principle underlying the Ionian League.”²³

These twelve poleis ostensibly traced their lineage back to the Ionian Migration. Many ancient accounts claimed that there was a wide-scale migration of people from the northern Peloponnese and led by Athenian settlers across the Aegean (e.g., Hdt. 1.142–50; Paus. 7.2–5; Plato Ion 542d). However, there is little to suggest that these stories represent historical fact. Mac Sweeney has recently demonstrated that only roughly half of the foundation stories mention the Ionian Migration and many of those that do frame it as one of several possible origin myths.²⁴ Moreover, the archaeological remains from Ionia show not only that these sites were occupied from an early date, but also that there was significant cultural continuity.²⁵ Mac Sweeney concludes that it was only in the early sixth century when the standard term for this region shifted from “Asia” to “Ionia” and the first traces of collective activity at the Panionion can be identified. Thus, she suggests, these stories about common descent developed to set these communities apart from their neighbors.²⁶

I evaluate the history of the Classical period principally in light of the happenings of this narrow set of poleis, and focus unevenly on them even then, but the story of Ionia would be incomplete without considering the other people who lived in the region. There were numerous small communities scattered throughout Ionia that existed in the shadow of their more famous neighbors. Just as the members of the dodecapolis negotiated their position between imperial powers, so, too, was a parallel dance taking place within Ionia, where Teos, Colophon, Ephesus, and others sought to dominate their small neighbors like Cyrbissus, Notium, and Pygela. Borders in and around Ionia were contested spaces,²⁷ and the relationships between these communities were disputed in terms of legal status and identity, which created the conditions for a fluid political environment.²⁸

Archaic Ionia

The Archaic period is generally regarded as the high point of Ionian history, and with good reason. As early as the eighth century, intrepid settlers from Ionia had begun to found colonies on the shores of the Bosporus and around the Black Sea.²⁹ Miletus alone was said to have founded more than ninety settlements (Pliny H.N. 5.122), while Phocaea established colonies as far away as Massilia in southern France.³⁰ Ionian merchants also helped establish the emporia Naucratis in Egypt and Posideion in Syria.³¹ These overseas connections led many Ionians to seek fortune abroad. Graffiti at Abu Simbel listing the names of men from Teos and Colophon testify to the Ionian mercenaries in the pay of Egyptian pharaohs, and an inscription records the gifts given from Pharaoh Psammetichus I (r. 664–620) to one Pedon of Priene (SEG 37, 994).³²

This interaction with the wider eastern Mediterranean world also contributed to the development of Ionia as an epicenter of Archaic Greek culture. Mary Bachvarova has argued that Hittite religious festivals created a poetic ferment out of which developed Greek epic.³³ It should not be a surprise that no fewer than three Ionian poleis, Chios, Colophon, and Smyrna, claimed Homer as their own (Strabo 14.1.35; Suda omicron 251). Other stories linked Homer with Creophylus of Samos, who claimed to have hosted him, but was variously said to have been Homer’s teacher or emulated him (Strabo 14.1.18). This same ferment produced an unusual concentration of philosophical and scientific luminaries, including Bias of Priene (Strabo 14.1.12), Pythagoras of Samos (Strabo 14.1.16), Anaximenes and Thales of Miletus (Strabo 14.1.7; Suda theta 17), and Heraclitus of Ephesus (Strabo 14.1.25). Thales was said to have been a Phoenician by descent if not birth (Hdt. 1.170.3). Lyric poetry also found fertile ground in the aristocratic culture of Archaic Ionia, much as it did in Aeolis to the north.³⁴ Nor were the fruits of Ionian engagement with Western Asia limited to literary culture. These interactions both shaped material culture in the region and likely accelerated the development of monumental architecture, particularly in the temples that began to appear during this period.³⁵

However, it is a mistake to identify Ionian autonomy as the cause of these achievements. From the mid-seventh century, the Mermnad dynasty had consolidated and strengthened the Lydian kingdom centered at Sardis.³⁶ The growth of Lydian power led to conflict with the nearby Ionian poleis. The lyric poet Mimnermus composed verses about battles between the Lydian king Gyges and the people of Smyrna in the 660s (BNJ 578 F 5), and Herodotus says he attacked Miletus and captured Colophon (1.15).³⁷ Herodotus’ subsequent chapters paint a picture of continued conflict between Lydia and Ionia. The second Mermnad king, Ardys, raided Miletus again and captured Priene (1.16). Herodotus passes over the reign of the third king, Sadyattes, but subsequently credits him with beginning a war against Miletus that raged for twelve years and only ended when a fire started by the Lydians burned a temple of Athena of Assesos (1.17–19). According to Herodotus’ tale, Alyattes would only recover when he had rebuilt the temple, so the king ended up suing for peace—helped in no small part by a scheme concocted by the tyrant Thrasybulus that tricked Alyattes into not recognizing how desperate things had become in Miletus (1.20–22).³⁸ Throughout this period, Alyattes had also raided Clazomenae and captured Smyrna, and his son Croesus followed in his footsteps by raiding Ephesus and other Ionian poleis (Hdt. 1.26).³⁹

Unsurprisingly, these attacks prompted a wave of construction on defensive fortifications, but, while the Mermnad kings of Lydia posed a common threat to Ionia, the region nevertheless remained fractured.⁴⁰ The only attested example of one polis offering aid to another was Chios to Miletus, and then only because the Milesians had extended aid in an earlier war against Erythrae (Hdt. 1.18.3). Once Croesus had captured the mainland Ionians, Herodotus says, he began to prepare for a naval campaign against the large island poleis, only to be dissuaded by Bias of Priene or Pittacus of Mytilene (1.27). What developed from these campaigns was a hegemonic relationship that is striking for its similarity to the relationship between Ionia and the imperial actors of the Classical period. The Ionians paid tribute (Hdt. 1.6.1, 1.27.1) but were left to govern themselves while the Lydian kings made conspicuous dedications at Ionian sanctuaries and employed Ionian craftsmen (Hdt. 1.22, 92; cf. Nikolaos of Damascus BNJ 90 F 65).⁴¹

When Cyrus toppled the Mermnad dynasty in 545–543, the Ionians were on the losing side.⁴² According to Herodotus, Cyrus tried to divide Croesus’ army by persuading the Ionians to defect (1.76.3).⁴³ He offers no explanation for why the Ionians chose to stay with Croesus, but they adamantly held out even after the fall of Sardis. Where the Lydian conquest had taken place piece-meal, the Persians were methodical in subjugating Ionia. Cyrus’ general Harpagus systematically besieged the Ionian cities excepting only Miletus, which had made an earlier treaty with Cyrus (Hdt. 1.162–69).

Herodotus characterizes this turn as the second time that the Ionians had been enslaved (οὕτω δὴ τὸ δεύτερον Ἰωνίη ἐδεδούλωτο, 1.169.2), but it is worth asking what had actually changed.⁴⁴ The Persian imperial state that Cyrus introduced to western Asia Minor came with traditions of centralized control inherited from the Medes, who themselves had adopted them from Assyria.⁴⁵ However, early Persian rule in Ionia was no more immediate than Lydian rule had been. The Ionians owed tribute and were required to supply men and ships to Persian campaigns such as Cambyses’ invasion of Egypt in 525 (Hdt. 3.1.1),⁴⁶ but their location on the imperial frontier gave considerable leeway to local actors. On Samos, Polycrates seized control of the state and not only maintained open relationships with both the Persian king Cambyses and the Egyptian Amasis (Hdt. 2.192; 3.39–44; Diod. 1.95), but also waged war on Miletus (Hdt. 3.39) and, ultimately, contributed ships to Cambyses’ invasion of Egypt—even if he also allegedly used the expedition to eliminate potential rivals by requesting Cambyses not send them home (Hdt. 3.44).⁴⁷ Jack Balcer explained the last action as a clear sign of “Samos’ vassalage status within the Persian Empire,” but this description does not entirely square with the portrait of Polycrates negotiating his position in the eastern Aegean.⁴⁸ When necessary, he acknowledged his subordinate position toward the king; where possible, he flaunted demands from the king’s representatives and flagrantly raided the king’s subjects. Indeed, it was this very activity that forced Miletus to bind itself closer to Persia in return for protection.⁴⁹

The structure of the Achaemenid empire changed in 522 after the accession of the third Persian king, Darius. In some ways a second founder of the Persian Empire, Darius’ path to the throne was not straightforward. Both his imperial propaganda and historical sources suggest widespread opposition to this upstart related to Cyrus only through marriage (e.g., Hdt. 3.88, 133). The Persian succession crisis and Darius’ measures to secure his empire are beyond the scope of this study, but it is worth noting that although Oroetes, the satrap of Sparda (which included Ionia), was one of Darius’ opponents (Hdt. 3.127), his rebellion does not appear to have drawn the Ionian poleis into the conflict.⁵⁰

Once Darius secured his throne, he set about overhauling the loose administrative structures he inherited. In practical terms, this meant two changes: creating twenty satrapies and regularizing the assessed tribute that subjects owed to the Persian throne (Hdt. 3.89). Under this new organization, Darius grouped the Ionians with the Magnesians, Aeolians, Carians, Lycians, Mily-ans, and Pamphylians, who, together, owed four hundred talents of silver (Hdt. 3.90). Darius also conscripted labor from around the empire for his ambitious building projects. Evidence from Susa and Persepolis reveals the presence of Ionian artisans on the Iranian plateau.⁵¹ Likewise, Classical sources attest to the presence of Ionian artists and engineers in Persian employ, including Tele-phanes, an artist from Phocaea (Pliny H.N. 34.68), and the Samian engineer Mandrocles, who built the bridge across the Bosporus for Darius’ first expedi-tion to Europe (Hdt. 4.87–89).

Darius’ administrative changes connected Ionia more closely to the imperial center, but their effect on the political life in the region was mixed. Darius conquered Samos at the behest of Polycrates’ brother Syloson, who, Herodotus says, he owed a favor stemming from his generosity during Cambyses’ campaign in Egypt (Hdt. 1.139). When the Samians resisted the installation of this client ruler, the Persian general Otanes ordered his soldiers to take no prison-ers and handed the island devoid of men over to Syloson (Hdt. 3.146–49).⁵² This portrait of a desolate island is likely exaggerated but reflects the historical reality that the Persians brooked no opposition and reserved the right to relocate their subjects. Nor was Syloson the only tyrant that the Persians installed. During Darius’ campaign in 513, the Scythians tried to persuade the Greeks to destroy the bridge across the Danube and strand the Persian king, but Histiaeus of Miletus persuaded the Greeks present, including Strattis of Chios, Aeaces of Samos (Syloson’s son, Hdt. 6.13), and Laodamas of Phocaea, not to follow this advice on the grounds that it was through Persian power that each of them held power—without Darius, he said, their people would choose democracy (Hdt. 4.137). Beneath this rubric of Persian-backed tyrants, local politics continued abreast until the eruption of the Ionian revolt in 499.⁵³

A Region in Revolt: Ionia 499–494

By the year 500, Ionia had been subordinated to more powerful neighbors for generations. That year, exiles from Naxos and Paros approached Aristagoras, Histiaeus’ cousin and the new client ruler of Miletus,⁵⁴ asking that he restore them to power (Hdt. 5.29–30). Aristagoras lacked the resources to carry out the plan but brought the proposal to the Persian satrap Artaphernes, who agreed to provide him a fleet with which to capture the Cyclades (Hdt. 5.30–32). The following spring, Aristagoras and the Persian general Megabates sailed for Naxos at the head of a large fleet that included a significant number of Ionian ships and soldiers levied by Persia (Hdt. 5.32–44). Far from an easy conquest, the siege dragged on for four months, sapping the allotted funds and much of Aristagoras’ own money (Hdt. 5.34).⁵⁵ According to Herodotus, Aristagoras began to doubt his ability to deliver on his promise and feared that the consequence of his failure would be the loss of Miletus (5.35.1–2).

About the same time, he allegedly received a secret message from Histiaeus tattooed on the head of an enslaved man and hidden beneath his hair, instructing him to foment revolt (Hdt. 5.35.3–4). Aristagoras, Herodotus says, then gave up his tyranny and seized the other tyrants and handed them back to their cities (5.37–38) before sailing to Sparta and Athens in search of allies (5.38–55, 97–99).⁵⁶ Naturally, most of the deposed tyrants fled to Persia.

Such was the genesis of the Ionian revolt, an event that has traditionally been treated as the final punctuation mark on Archaic Ionia. Of course, Herodotus does not ask the same questions as modern historians and thus does not offer satisfactory answers. The result has been a lack of consensus on the actual cause of the revolt. The two most common proposals are both unsatisfactory. In the one, the Persian conquest gradually eroded Ionian prosperity, whether through excessive tribute demands or preferential treatment for Phoenician merchants, which, in turn, caused resentment of Persian rule. And yet the Persian economic system did not favor Phoenician merchants and, as Pericles Georges points out, the Ionians had already lived within a tributary regime for at least a half century.⁵⁷ In the other proposal, the Ionian revolt erupted because of a developing sense of “nationalism.”⁵⁸ However, interpreting the Ionian revolt as a general anti-Persian conflict is misleading even when eschewing the anachronistic term “nationalism.”⁵⁹ Recent scholarship has begun to consider how the local political conditions in the Ionian poleis might have caused the revolt, looking at popular opposition to the tyrannies and how the obligations these tyrants owed to the Persian king changed their relationship with the people they ruled.⁶⁰ This interpretation thus brings Aristagoras back to the fore as a proto-demagogue who was able to turn a wave of underlying resentment toward his own ends.

But what is meant by “Ionian revolt”? Without question, there was a general uprising in western Anatolia, and, while Herodotus opens this section by describing the events simply as “evils” that came to Ionia (κακά, 5.28), he later refers to it as a revolt either in Ionia (6.1) or of the Ionians that then spread to neighboring regions (5.104.2, 117). Aristagoras’ role in the outbreak and the coordination at Panionion ensured that the revolt remained centered on Ionia, but there is ambiguity as to who was involved. In fact, the “Ionian revolt” was not a general uprising of a unified Ionia.⁶¹ Consider the case of Ephesus. Some Ephesians helped guide the raid to Sardis in 498 (Hdt. 5.100), but Ephesus itself remained conspicuously detached from the revolt. While the poleis of Lesbos sent seventy ships to fight alongside the Ionians at the battle of Lade in 494 (Hdt. 6.8), the only Ephesian contribution to the battle was to kill some Chian survivors whom they allegedly mistook for raiders (Hdt. 6.16). For later chroniclers, an uprising that met in council at the Panionion could indicate Greek antipathy toward Persia or a coalescence of regional identity, but the description of the events demonstrates regional fissures.⁶²

Despite the stunning raid on Sardis in 498, the inevitability of Persian power quickly set in. Darius’s generals regained supremacy on land where they harried the force that captured Sardis (Hdt. 5.116) and hammered a Milesian army in the Maeander plain (Hdt. 5.120). Artaphernes and Otanes soon turned their attentions to Ionia itself, capturing Clazomenae (Hdt. 5.123). For his part, Aristagoras abandoned the revolt and fled to Thrace (Hdt. 5.124–26). The war dragged on for more than four years before the Persian fleet and army finally converged on Miletus. The rebels met the Persians by sea near the island of Lade (Hdt. 5.7–16), but the battle quickly turned sour for the Ionians. All but eleven of the sixty Samian ships deserted, which caused others to follow suit. Moreover, the remaining crews were exhausted from a week of strenuous training, so those who held firm were soon overwhelmed. Persian forces tightened the noose around Miletus after the battle (Hdt. 6.18). Herodotus spares readers the gruesome details of the capture, but it was so traumatic that when Phyrnicus produced a play at Athens called The Capture of Miletus not only did the whole theater weep, but the Athenians also fined him a thousand drachmae and banned its performance (Hdt. 6.21.2).⁶³

Persian forces stamped out the remaining embers of revolt over the next year, recapturing and executing Histiaeus (Hdt. 6.30), easily (εὐπετέως) subduing Chios (Hdt. 6.31), and exacting revenge by putting temples to flame, castrating boys, and carrying away young women (Hdt. 6.31). Those who could fled (Hdt. 6.22–24), probably to escape retribution more than out of an aversion to living under Persian rule, and the Persians deported people from Miletus to the Red Sea (Hdt. 6.20).

And yet taking Persian actions in their entirety reveals a commitment to mitigating the circumstances that incited the revolt. First, Artaphernes brought the Ionian leaders to Sardis to compel them to stop fighting among themselves and setting a precedent for Persian arbitration between conflicting parties (Hdt. 6.42.1). Then he conducted a survey of Ionia that regularized the tribute payments at a level no higher than it was before (Hdt. 6.42.2).⁶⁴ Pericles Georges observed that this tributary burden fell upon fewer citizens than before the revolt, but the fact that Artaphernes based the obligation on the agricultural output of each polis meant that it was the contrary of vindictive.⁶⁵ Likewise, while Artaphernes initially restored the tyrants to power in the Ionian cities, his successor, Mardonius, reversed that decision and turned local rule over to democracies (Hdt. 6.43).⁶⁶ In his account of the end of the Ionian revolt, Diodorus Siculus includes an exchange between Artaphernes and the Milesian his-torian Hecataeus (10.25.4). Artaphernes muses that he is concerned about the Ionians resenting the Persians for their treatment during the revolt. Hecataeus responds that if suffering evils had engendered mistrust, then good treatment will engender amity (εὐνοούσας). The exchange is likely pure invention, but it is telling, nevertheless. Persian officials gave Ionia considerable latitude for self-governance. When it came time for an invasion of the Balkans just over a decade later, the Ionians numbered among the Persian forces.⁶⁷

Archaic Ionia was a dynamic place, but this efflorescence did not take place in isolation. Rather, it developed in tension and cooperation with first Lydia and then Achaemenid Persia. The ruthless suppression of the Ionian revolt must have represented a collective trauma for the people who lived through it, but it is also unfair to describe the last half century of the Archaic period in terms of decline. The imperial regime had changed, but the way that the Ionians interacted with this world had not. In fact, the revolt was largely the result of Ionian elites exploiting an imperial system for their own gain, which we will see again and again throughout the Classical period. Thus, when the Hellenic League “liberated” the region in 479, it was not at all certain that freedom was anything more than a political slogan designed to win support for a new form of hegemony.

Endnotes

Αἰολέας δὲ καὶ Ἴωνας οὐ συνεχώρει ὡς ἐκ πολλοῦ καὶ τοῖς βαρβάροις βασιλεῦσι τῆς Ἀσίας εἰθισμένους ὑπακούειν.
The Copenhagen Polis Center, directed by Mogens Herman Hansen and Thomas Heine Nielsen, identified 1,035 communities as “poleis” between c.800 and 323 BCE. I have borrowed the term “imagined communities” from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso Books, 1983).
To name a few, Jeremy McInerney, The Folds of Parnassos: Land and Ethnicity in Ancient Phocis (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999); Christy Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Brian Rutishauser, Athens and the Cyclades: Economic Strategies, 510–314 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Jeremy LaBuff, Polis Expansion and Elite Power in Hellenistic Caria (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015); Aneurin Ellis-Evans, The Kingdom of Priam: Lesbos and the Troad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Alan M. Greaves, The Land of Ionia: Society and Economy in the Archaic Period (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
Miletus: Vanessa B. Gorman, Miletos, the Ornament of Ionia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001) and Alan M. Greaves, Miletos: A History (New York: Routledge, 2002); Samos: Graham Shipley, A History of Samos, 800–188 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Hellenistic Ephesus: Guy Maclean Rogers, The Mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos: Cult, Polis, and Change in the Graeco-Roman World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012); Elis: Graeme Bourke, Elis: Internal Politics and External Policy in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 2017); Thebes: Nicholas Rockwell, Thebes: A History (New York: Routledge, 2019).
E.g., John Hyland, Persian Interventions: The Achaemenid Empire, Athens, and Sparta, 450–386 BCE (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018); Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Immigrant Women in Athens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the Classical City (New York: Routledge, 2014); Kostas Vlassopoulos, Greeks and Barbarians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Kostas Vlassopoulos, Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 166–67, makes a compelling case that the polis ought not be the fundamental unit of analysis Greek history and offers examining the intersection of the polis and the region as one profitable direction of inquiry.
Kai Brodersen, “Aegean Greece,” in A Companion to the Classical World, ed. Konrad H. Kinzl (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), 103 on Miletus: “Rather than enjoying its former independence, it remained a prize in the conflicts between Athens, Sparta and Persia.”
Dina Guth, “The ‘Rise and Fall’ of Archaic Miletus,” Historia 66, no. 1 (2017): 2–20, makes this argument about interpretations of Archaic Miletus, but I believe it also applies to our interpretations of the Classical period.
In earlier periods this region was known as Asia (e.g., Homer Il. 2.461), perhaps connected to the Hittite Assuwa, but the word “Ionian” underwent a transformation in the sixth century BCE as Asia came to refer to the whole continent. See Naoíse Mac Sweeney, “Separating Fact from Fiction in the Ionian Migration,” Hesperia 86, no. 3 (2017): 384–86, with n. 19 and n. 25, in particular.
For a more comprehensive discussion of Ionian geography, see Greaves, Land of Ionia, 45–68, and Peter Thonemann, The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Greaves, Land of Ionia, 47–50.
The Gulf of Latmus provides the most striking example of the pace of silting. In the period of this study, Miletus lay at the end of a peninsula looking out into the wide expanse of the Gulf of Latmus. By the start of the Byzantine period, it was landlocked. See Helmut Brückner, “Delta Evolution and Culture—Aspects of Geoarchaeological Research in Miletos and Priene,” in Troi a and the Troad: Scientific Approaches, ed. Günther A. Wagner, Ernst Pernicka, and Hans-Peter Uerpmann (Berlin: Springer, 2003), 121–42; Greaves, Land of Ionia, 59; Alexander Herda et al., “From the Gulf of Latmos to Lake Bafa: On the History, Geoarchaeology, and Palynology of the Lower Maeander Valley at the Foot of the Latmos Mountains,” Hesperia 88, no. 1 (2019): 1–86.
The two river systems are geologically distinct, but the modern Turkish names, which translate to the “Big” and “Little” Maeander, indicate a conceptual link that Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 21–22, suggests emerged from the territorial claims of the first Turkish emirate in southwest Anatolia since the rivers bounded its territory. Cf. Greaves, Land of Ionia, 47–50.
In truth, Ionian Phocaea lay to the north of the Hermus river.
As Greaves, Land of Ionia, 49.
Greaves, Land of Ionia, 55–57, 65–68.
Piracy was endemic in the Mediterranean; see particularly Philip de Souza, Piracy in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 15–30; Clifford R. Backman, “Piracy,” in A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2014), 170–83. Cf. Peter B. Campbell and George Koutsouflakis, “Aegean Navigation and the Shipwrecks of Fourni: The archipelago in Context,” in Under the Mediterranean I, ed. Stella Demesticha and Lucy Blue (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2021), 279–98.
Colophon, which had an acropolis situated some fifteen kilometers inland from the sea, is the exception that proves the rule about the centrality of the sea, but the frequent conflicts over the status of the port Notium demonstrate that it was not exempt; see Chapter 3.
Recent maritime excavations off Fourni, a small island that in antiquity belonged to Samos, have revealed more than fifty shipwrecks; see Campbell and Koutsouflakis, “Aegean Navigation.”
Greaves, Land of Ionia, 124.
On the development of these nucleated centers, see Michael Kerschner, “The Spatial Development of Ephesos from ca. 1000–ca. 670 BC against the Background of Other Early Iron Age Settlements in Ionia,” in Regional Stories: Towards a New Perception of the Early Greek World, ed. Alexander Marikakis Ainian, Alexandra Alexandridou, and Xenia Charalambidou (Volos: University of Thessaly Press, 2017), 487–503.
Herodotus characterizes Smyrna as a colony from Colophon (τὴν ἀπὸ Κολοφῶνος κτισθεῖσαν, 1.16), but the evidence for this is slim. Lene Rubinstein, “Ionia,” in An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, ed. Mogens Herman Hansen and Thomas Heine Nielsen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1099, suggests that Herodotus’ mention of Smyrna’s application but silence on admission indicates a rejection at that time. Smyrna eventually received membership based on alleged kinship with Ephesus (Strabo 14.1.4); see Nicholas Cross, “The Panionia: The Ritual Context for Identity Construction in Archaic Ionia,” Mediterranean Studies 28, no. 1 (2020): 7–8. Greaves, Land of Ionia, 96–107, provides the best survey of each site.
On the creation of Ionian regional identity, see Naoíse Mac Sweeney, “Regional Identities in the Greek World: Myth and Koinon in Ionia,” Historia 70, no. 3 (2021): 268–314; cf. Appendix 1.
Naoíse Mac Sweeney, Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 196–97.
Mac Sweeney, “Separating Fact from Fiction.” Cf. Mac Sweeney, Foundation Myths, where she evaluates competition between these early foundation myths and Ferdinando Ferraioli, “Tradizioni sull’autoctonia nelle città ioniche d’Asia,” Erga-Logoi 5, no. 2 (2017): 113–22, who evaluates the emergence of foundation myths that claimed autochthony for Miletus, Ephesus, Samos, Chios, and Smyrna.
Cf. David Hill, “Conceptualising Interregional Relations in Ionia and Central-West Anatolia from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Period,” in Bordered Places, Bounded Times: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Turkey, ed. Emma L. Baysal and Leonidas Karakatsanis (Ankara: British Institute at Ankara, 2017), 85–96; John Michael Kearns, “Greek and Lydian Evidence of Diversity, Erasure, and Convergence in Western Asia Minor,” Syllecta Classica 14 (2003): 23–36; Jana Mokrišová, “On the Move: Mobility in Southwest Anatolia and the Southeast Aegean during the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age Transition” (PhD diss. University of Michigan, 2017), 230–67, 284–87.
Mac Sweeney, “Separating Fact from Fiction,” 284, with n. 19. This was also roughly the same time when the “Hellas” transformed from designating a narrow geographical area to a broader meaning; see Jonathan Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 129–34. On invention of these identities, cf. Emily Sarah Wilson, “What’s in a Name? Trade, Sanctuaries, Diversity, and Identity in Archaic Ionia” (PhD. diss., University of Chicago, 2018), 22–51.
As Hill, “Conceptualising Interregional Relations.”
See Appendix 2.
Christian Marek, In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World, in collaboration with Peter Frei, trans. Steven Rendall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 128–30. Any explanation for this wave of settlements remains speculative, but it coincided with a wider colonizing movement throughout the Aegean world that likely coincided with a growing population; see Walter Scheidel, “The Greek Demographic Expansion: Models and Comparisons,” JHS 123 (2003): 120–40, if not the explosive growth sometimes imagined. Joseph Manning, The Open Sea: The Economic Life of the Ancient Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 52, suggests that most Greek colonies settling in fertile agricultural regions indicates the need to support larger populations.
The Milesian colonies are typically identified in that they shared government structures and religious calendar with their mother city, but Alan M. Greaves, in “Milesians in the Black Sea: Trade: Settlement, and Religion,” in The Black Sea in Antiquity, ed. Vincent Gabrielsen and John Lund (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2007), 9–21, and in Land of Ionia, 134, argues that rather than being foundations composed of Milesians, they were colonies sanctioned by the oracle at Didyma.
Greek distinguishes between two types of colonies, apoikia (new settlements) and emporia (trading posts), though Greaves, Land of Ionia, 123–27, notes the challenges of distinguishing between the two in the archaeological remains. For Naucratis and Posideion, one key characteristic was collaborative foundation.
Wilson, “What’s in a Name?,” 95–100, offers the best survey of Ionian mercenaries in the eastern Aegean, but cf. Greaves, Land of Ionia, 166–68. Assyrian records indicate a battle between Sargon and the Yamnāiu/Yaunāiu (certainly Greeks, possibly Ionians) in the late eighth century; see Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, “The Ideological and Political Impact of the Assyrian Imperial Expansion on the Greek World in the 8th and 7th Centuries BC,” in The Heirs of Assyria, ed. Sanna Aro and R. M. Whiting (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2000), 13–21, with n. 20 on the identification of Yamnāiu/Yaunāiu.
Mary Bachvarova, From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Greek Epic (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press: 2016). On court of Polycrates on Samos generating the Homeric Hymns to Apollo, see Antonio Aloni, “The Politics of Composition and Performance of the Homeric ‘Hymn to Apollo,’” in Apolline Politics and Poetics, ed. Lucia Athanassaki, Richard P. Martin, and John F. Miller (Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture, 2009), 55–65; Walter Burkert, “Kynaithos, Polycrates, and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo,” in Arktouros, ed. Glen W. Bowersock, Walter Burkhert, and Michael C. J. Putnam (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979), 53–62; M. L. West, “The Invention of Homer,” CQ2 49, no. 2 (1999): 364–82.
There are poets attested through fragments or testimony from Miletus (on Phocylides, see M. L. West, “Phocylides,” JHS 98 [1978]: 164–67), Ephesus (Callinus and Hipponax, Strabo 14.1.25), Teos (Anacreon, Strabo 14.1.30; Suda alpha 1916), and Colophon (Xenophanes and Mimnermus, Strabo 14.1.28), with at least one of those, Mimnermus, possibly hailing from Smyrna. West, “Phocylides,” describes Phocylides’ gnomic verses as “wisdom of the east,” while Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influences on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Period, trans. Margaret E. Pinder and Walter Burkert (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) posited that Greek culture owed a significant debt to engagement with the eastern Mediterranean.
Wilson, “What’s in a Name?,” 155–64, makes the case that Ionian sacred architecture diverged from its Anatolian neighbors over the course of the sixth century, both as a product of these maritime connections and as a way of staking out a distinct Ionian identity; cf. Chapter 9. On the Lydian influence on material culture, see Michael Kerschner, “Die Lyder und das Artemision von Ephesos,” in Die Archäologie der ephischen Artemis: Gestalt und Ritual eines Heiligtums, ed. Ulrike Muss (Vienna: Phoibos, 2008), 223–33.
On the growth of Lydian power, see Christopher H. Roosevelt, The Archaeology of Lydia, From Gyges to Alexander (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 22–26. Cf. Mait Kõiv, “Greek Rulers and Imperial Powers in Western Anatolia (8th–6th Centuries BC),” Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica 27, no. 2 (2021): 357–73, on the interaction between Ionian and Lydian elites.
The sources for these early Lydian campaigns make it difficult to reconstruct the chronology, which is why I have chosen to largely follow Herodotus. Polyaenus credits Alyattes, rather than Gyges, with capturing Colophon (7.2). J. M. Cook, “On the Date of Alyattes’ Sack of Smyrna,” ABSA 80 (1980): 25–28, offers evidence for the sack taking place c.600. On other chronological issues, see Hans Kaletsch, “Zur lydischen Chronologie,” Historia 7, no. 1 (1958): 1–47; Mario Lombardo, “Osservazioni cronologiche e storiche sul regno di Sadiatte,” ASNP 10, no. 2 (1980): 307–62; Robert W. Wallace, “Redating Croesus: Herodotean Chronologies, and the Dates of the Earliest Coinages,” JHS 136 (2016): 168–81.
Alyattes also engaged in other diplomatic endeavors. One of his wives was an Ionian woman, the son of whom was enough of a threat to the throne that Croesus, whose mother was Carian, had him executed when he took the throne (Hdt. 1.92.2–4). These relationships were not unusual. The tyrants of Ephesus traced their descent back to Gyges through Alyattes (Aelian VH 3.26), while Nikolaos of Damascus records that “Miletos” was both descended from Melas, the brother-in-law of Gyges, and married to the sister of Sadyattes (BNJ 90 F 63).
On Alyattes’ capture of Smyrna, see Nikolaos of Damascus BNJ 90 F 64. Kevin Leloux, “The Campaign of Croesus against Ephesus: Historical and Archaeological Considerations,” Polemos 21, no. 2 (2018): 47–63, recently reevaluated the archaeological evidence to suggest that Ephesus surrendered to Croesus without a siege.
On the dating of Archaic walls, see Rune Fredericksen, Archaic City Walls of the Archaic Period, 900–480 BCE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), particularly 50–69; Greaves, Land of Ionia, 156–63. Greaves suggests that the Ionian fortifications were built not just as protection against incursions, but also in emulation of Lydian fortifications. Even after the Ionian revolt, Art-aphernes required the Ionians to make treaties with each other (Hdt. 6.42), though Cross, “Panio-nia,” 15, regards this as a suppression of the Ionian League, but see Appendix 1.
Walter Burkert, “Gyges to Croesus: Historiography between Herodotus and Cuneiform,” in Schools of Oriental Studies and the Development of Modern Historiography, ed. Antonio Panaino, Andrea Piras, and Gian Pietro Basello (Milan: Mimesis, 2004), 48, suggests that Lydia offered another avenue for Ionian trade to Western Asia.
For a narrative of the Persian conquest, see Jack Martin Balcer, Sparda by the Bitter Sea: Imperial Interaction in Western Anatolia (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1984), 95–109.
Roosevelt, Archaeology of Lydia, 26, characterizes these Ionian soldiers as mercenaries, but it is better to interpret their service as an obligation to the Lydian empire, as the Ionians would later provide to Persia.
Herodotus modifies his language, referring to the first as a καταστροφή (1.91.6), which marks a subjugation or ruin, but not quite slavery.
Balcer, Sparda, 118–19; but see Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. Peter T. Daniels (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 13–28, on the disjunctions in this interpretation. Reza Zarghamee, Discovering Cyrus: The Persian Conqueror Astride the Ancient World (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2013), 251–92, describes Achaemenid royal ideology as a subversion of Assyrian and Babylonian practice in its tolerance of local customs.
Balcer, Sparda, 107, argues that Cyrus’ tribute demands were less regular than Croesus’, based on Herodotus’ description of the subjects owing “gifts” (3.89.3). Herodotus marks the change to fixed tribute as a sign of Darius’ miserliness, but Cyrus’ demands had likely placed greater emphasis on symbolic submission.
Shipley, Samos, 97, observes that in this version of the story, Polycrates volunteered his ships to Cambyses. The gambit backfired when the dissidents Polycrates failed to kill fled to Sparta, leading to a Spartan expedition and siege (Hdt. 3.45–49, 54–59).
Balcer, Sparda, 108.
As Guth, “Rise and Fall,” convincingly argues.
On the rebellions at the outset of Darius’ reign, see Balcer, Sparda, 123–43; Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 107–22. Darius recorded his victory in an inscription at Behistun. The monument includes Lydia and the Greeks among the subject people but does not include them among the rebellions.
See Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 429–39, for the lives of these craftsmen, with 422–25 on the nature of the evidence. The foundation inscription at Susa (DSf ) proudly lists the Ionians as stonecutters working on the project; see Pierre Lecoq, Les Inscriptions de la Perse achéménide (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), 237. The Persepolis Fortification Tablets (PFT) reveal mothers (1224), grain handlers (1942, 1965), and other Ionians (1224, 1798, 1800, 1810, 2072) in this labor force. Persian accounting did not distinguish between the Yauna of Ionia and those of other Greek poleis, but it is likely that a significant portion of these workers came from Ionia proper. Carl Nylander, Ionians in Pasargadae: Studies in Old Persian Architecture (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1970), remains the classic study of Ionian building techniques at the Persian palaces and is broadly accepted by Margaret Cool Root, The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an Iconography of Empire (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 9–14, with the caveat that these styles were in the service of an “Achaemenid programmatic vision” where Greeks were just one part; but cf. Alan M. Greaves, John Brendan Knight, and Françoise Rutland, “Milesian Élite Responses to Persia: The Ionian Revolt in Context,” Hermathena 204–5 (2020): 87–89, who argue that there are few Ionian artistic influences in Achaemenid art. The workers may have stayed only for a short time before returning home, but Richard T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 6, suggests that the ration texts indicate that most travelers to Persepolis remained there.
On Syloson as a client ruler, see Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 140; Shipley, Samos, 103–6.
For instance, the Milesian aesymnetes list (Milet I.3 no. 122), inscribed in the 330s, records a plausible list of eponymous executives that begins in this period and Teos was refounded during this same period; see Chapter 2.
Histiaeus had been detained at Darius’ court since 511/0 (Hdt. 5.24).
Arthur Keaveney, “The Attack on Naxos: A ‘Forgotten Cause’ of the Ionian Revolt,” CQ 238, no. 1 (1988): 76–81, reads hostility between the Greek and Persian leaders that he believes led to Megabates sabotaging the expedition as described by Herodotus; cf. Pericles Georges, “Persian Ionia under Darius: The Revolt Reconsidered,” Historia 49, no. 1 (2000): 17–18.
Although Herodotus makes it clear that Aristagoras formally handed back power to the Milesians and dissolved other tyrannies in the eastern Aegean, he presents Aristagoras a demagogue who manipulated his audiences, both in Miletus (5.36.1–2) and abroad (e.g., 5.97.2) with misleading words that appealed to what they wanted to hear.
Georges, “Persian Ionia,” 22; Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 149–50. The economic thesis is most prominent in George L. Cawkwell, The Greek Wars: The Failure of Persia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 71–74; Peter Green, The Greco-Persian Wars, reprint ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 45–47; O. Murray, “The Ionian Revolt,” in Cambridge Ancient History 2, vol. 4, ed. John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, David M. Lewis, and Martin Ostwald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 475–76; H. T. Wallinga, “The Ionian Revolt,” Mnemosyne 4 37, nos. 3–4 (1984): 401–37. Green specifically blames Darius’ “short-sighted avarice.” Recently Marek, Land of a Thousand Gods, 142, suggested that the Ionians might have believed that Persian expansion might interfere with their prosperity irrespective of whether it actually did. While the evidence makes it impossible to offer a comparative assessment of Ionian prosperity, Georges, “Persian Ionia,” 10, is undoubtedly correct that “the Persian presence . . . redirected, rather than depressed, the Ionian economy.” Erik Jensen, The Greco-Persian Wars (Indianapolis, IN: Hack-ett, 2021), 18, offers a modified version of the economic thesis, that Darius’ expansionist policies had dramatically increased the demands on Ionia.
J. A. S. Evans, “Histiaeus and Aristagoras: Notes on the Ionian Revolt,” AJPh 84, no. 2 (1963): 113–28, actually declares: “We must realize that the Ionian revolt was a nationalist movement,” while other scholars avoid using the n-word, but nevertheless couch their interpretation in terms of “uniquely” Greek notions of “freedom,” as A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks: The Defence of the West c.546–478 B.C. (London: Edward Arnold, 1962), 193; Charles Hignett, Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 85; Gaetano de Sanctis, “Aristagora di Mileto,” Rivista di filologia e diistruzione classica 59 (1931): 48–72. Greaves, Knight, and Rutland, “Milesian élite responses,” 70–72, point out that these interpretations rely on a close and uncritical reading of Herodotus.
As Balcer, Sparda, 232–36.
Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 150–52; Georges, “Persian Ionia,” 19–23; cf. P. B. Manville, “Aristagoras and Histiaios: The Leadership Struggle in the Ionian Revolt,” CQ 2 27, no. 1 (1977): 80–91. Recently, Greaves, Knight, and Rutland, “Milesian élite responses,” 2018, show how the Milesian elite accommodated Persian rule as a way of turning it to their own ends. Under their interpretation, Aristagoras initiated the revolt to regain the arēte he lost in the failure at Naxos.
J. Neville, “Was There an Ionian Revolt?,” CQ 2 29, no. 2 (1979): 268–75, takes this argument to the extreme in rejecting altogether that Herodotus saw an “Ionian” revolt, but he goes too far in his zeal to counteract pernicious ideas about Ionian “nationalism.”
Cf. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 155. On the Panionion, see Appendix 1.
Balcer, Sparda, 245, suggests that the Persian fury against Miletus was because it had held a privileged position, but it is more likely that this was the center of opposition. It is also likely that reports of the destruction of Miletus were hyperbolic; see Chapter 2.
These two measures were linked; changes to the territorial holdings of one polis meant a change in its tributary obligation; see Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 494–96.
Georges, “Persian Ionia,” 34. Diod. 10.25.4 says that Artaphernes assessed tribute to each according to its ability to pay (τακτοὺς φόρους κατὰ δύναμιν ἐπέταξεν). Darius subsequently empowered Mardonius to relieve half of the assessed tribute (Polyaenus 7.11.3; Plut. Mor. 172F).
Persian support for democracies should not be a surprise. It was, after all, one of the tyrants who had incited the revolt. My interpretation runs contra Georges, “Persian Ionia,” 34, who characterizes Artaphernes as “a vindictive incompetent,” evidence for which he provides in the restoration of the tyrants.
On Persian governance of Ionia, see Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 493–97; Georges, “Persian Ionia,” 34–35.