![]() The Ionians also met annually on the island of Delos, the legendary birthplace of Apollo, their patron deity. The confederation, also known as the Dodecapolis, had its common meeting place at the Panionium, on the mainland opposite Samos. ![]() This comprised one city each on the islands of Chios and Samos and ten on the mainland of Asia Minor opposite, namely, Phocaea, Clazomenae, Erythrae, Teos, Lebedus, Colophon, Ephesus, Priene, Myus, and Miletus. The Ionian colonies soon organized themselves into a confederation called the Panionic League. remarks, “The Ionian countryside has excellently tempered seasons, and its sanctuaries are unrivalled.” He goes on to say that “the wonders of Ionia are numerous, and not much short of the wonders of Greece.” Herodotus, describing this migration in Book I of his Histories, writes that the Ionians ended up with the best location in Asia Minor, for they “had the good fortune to establish their settlements in a region which enjoys a better climate than any we know of.” Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, written in the second century A.D. The Aeolians gave birth to the lyric poet Sappho the Ionians to Homer and the natural philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes and the Dorians to Herodotus, the “Father of History.” ![]() Three Greek tribes were involved in this migration-the Aeolians to the north, the Ionians in the center, and the Dorians in the south-and together they produced the first flowering of Greek culture. , when they left their homeland in mainland Greece and migrated eastward across the Aegean, settling on the coast of Asia Minor and its offshore islands. A second colony was founded on the same site during the mass migration of Greeks early in the first millennium B.C. , when colonists from Minoan Crete are believed to have established a settlement here. The entrance to the port is still guarded by the marble statues of the two couchant lions from which it took its name, though they are now half-buried in alluvial earth, symbols of the illustrious city that Herodotus called “the glory of Ionia.” The Greek geographer Strabo writes that “many are the achievements of this city, but the greatest are the number of its colonizations, for the Euxine Pontus has been colonized everywhere by these people, as has the Propontis and several other regions.”Įxcavations have revealed that the earliest remains in Miletus date from the second half of the sixteenth century B.C. The site has been under excavation since the late nineteenth century, so that all of its surviving monuments have been unearthed and to some extent restored, though its ancient harbor, the Lion Port, has long been silted up, leaving Miletus marooned miles from the sea. Its buildings were now utterly devastated and partly covered with earth, from which the first flowers of spring were emerging, blood-red poppies contrasting with the pale white marble remnants of the dead city. When I first visited Miletus, in April 1961, it was completely deserted except for a goatherd and his flock, whose resonant bells broke the silence enveloping the ruins through which I wandered, the great Hellenistic theater, the cavernous Roman baths, the colonnaded way that led down to the Lion Port and its surrounding shops and warehouses, once filled with goods from Milesian colonies as far afield as Egypt and the Pontus. Since theatrical performances were often linked to sacred festivals, it is not uncommon to find theaters associated directly with sanctuaries.T he site of ancient Miletus is on the Aegean coast of Turkey south of Izmir, the Greek Smyrna. In many cases the Romans converted pre-existing Greek theaters to conform to their own architectural ideals, as is evident in the Theater of Dionysos on the slopes of the Athenian Acropolis. The Greek theater inspired the Roman version of the theater directly, although the Romans introduced some modifications to the concept of theater architecture. paradoi) provided access to the orchestra. Tiered seats in the theatron provided space for spectators. The Greek theater is composed of the seating area (theatron), a circular space for the chorus to perform (orchestra), and the stage ( skene). Theaters often took advantage of hillsides and naturally sloping terrain and, in general, utilized the panoramic landscape as the backdrop to the stage itself. 350 - 300 B.C.E., photo: Steven Zucker (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)The Greek theater was a large, open-air structure used for dramatic performance. ![]() Theatre at the Sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus, c. ![]()
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