Ionians, << eye OH nee uhnz, >> were a group of ancient Greeks. According to tradition, they lived in various parts of the Peloponnesus (the southern peninsula of Greece) before other Greeks known as Dorians invaded the area. To escape the invaders, many Ionians fled east to the section of Greece called Attica. Some of these Ionians became ancestors of people who lived in Athens later when it developed into a great city-state in Attica. Other Ionians sailed across the Aegean Sea and occupied Ionia, a region along the western coast of Asia Minor (part of present-day Turkey).
The people of Ionia organized a religious league of major independent cities. These cities included Ephesus, with its Temple of Artemis; and Miletus, birthplace of some early Greek philosophers. The Ionians were the cultural leaders of the Greeks in the 600’s and 500’s B.C. Western literature and philosophy (the study of truth, reality, and knowledge) originated with the Ionians.
King Croesus of Lydia conquered Ionia in the mid-500’s B.C. The Persians conquered it around 545 B.C. In the early 400’s B.C., Ionia rebelled against Persian rule and allied itself with Athens. In 404 B.C., Sparta and its allies defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Ionia again fell under Persian rule. Alexander the Great freed Ionia in the late 300’s B.C. But then Alexander’s successors and, later, the Romans dominated Ionia politically.
