Any ancient Greek inhabitant of Ionia, from the time of the collapse of Mycenae. Ionian cities colonized southern Italy and opened up the Black Sea from 700 BC. Their contributions to Greek culture included the epics of Homer and the earliest elegiac and iambic poetry. They began the study of geography, philosophy, and historiography in the 6th century. After Alexander the Great their literary language was the basis of Koine, or "common speech," the language of practically all Greek writing to the present day. Ionian Islands Ionian revolt Ionian school Ionian Sea
A group of islands in the Ionian Sea - one of the 13 peripheries of Greece The main islands are Corfu, Ithaca, Kefallonia, Kythira, Lefkada, Paxoi and Zante
A chain of islands of western Greece in the Ionian Sea. Colonized by the ancient Greeks, the islands subsequently came under the rule of Rome, Byzantium, Venice, France, Russia, and Great Britain before being ceded to Greece in 1864. ancient Heptanesos Group of seven Greek islands (pop., 2001: 214,274) in the Ionian Sea. They include Corfu, Cephalonia, Zacynthus, Leucas, Ithaca, Cythera, and Paxos and have a combined land area of 891 sq mi (2,307 sq km). Controlled by Venice in the 15th and 16th centuries, they were taken by Russian and Turkish forces in 1799. In 1815 the Treaty of Paris placed them under the control of Britain; the British ceded them to Greece in 1864
An arm of the Mediterranean Sea between western Greece and southern Italy. It is linked with the Adriatic Sea by the Strait of Otranto. Part of the Mediterranean Sea lying between Greece, Sicily, and Italy. Though once considered part of the Adriatic Sea, to which it connects by the Strait of Otranto, it is now considered a separate body. The Mediterranean reaches its greatest depth (16,000 ft or 4,900 m) in the Ionian south of Greece. Along its eastern shore are the Ionian Islands
Uprising (499-494 BC) of some of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor against their Persian overlords. The cities deposed their own tyrants and, with help from Athens, tried unsuccessfully to throw off Persian domination. Darius I of Persia used Athens's involvement as a pretext for his invasion of Greece in 490, initiating the Persian Wars, which resulted in a stronger Athenian influence in western Anatolia
School of Greek philosophers of the 6th-5th century BC, including Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heracleitus, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, Archelaus, and Hippon. Though Ionia was the original center of their activity, they differed so greatly from one another in their conclusions that they cannot truly be said to represent a specific school of philosophy, but their common concern to explain phenomena in terms of matter or physical forces distinguished them from later thinkers