Iōnes
（
Ἴωνες). Ionians; one of the two great original divisions
of the Hellenic race, the other being the Doric. Their ancestors at an early period spread
over the coasts of Asia Minor, and there established a people of great commercial and
intellectual activity, while the ancestors of the Dorians settled in the highlands of Northern
Greece. In Asia the Ionians came into close contact with the Semitic peoples, especially at
Miletus, and from them received an impulse towards civilization which they in turn imparted to
their kinsmen on the other side of the Aegaean. Their name (under the form
Ἰάονες) occurs only once in the
Iliad (xiii.
685), but not long after this we find them in Attica and in a part of the Peloponnesus. Their
name was by them derived from that of the mythical Ion, adopted son of Xuthus (cf.
Herod.viii. 44). The Oriental peoples called the Greeks indiscriminately
by the name “Ionians” (Schol. on
Acharn. 104). See
Hellas;
Heraclidae;
Ionia;
Pelasgi.
