founded by Ionians and occupied by Ionians, some hint of the older Greek writers would have given a gleam of the truth. But on the contrary the belief of the Aeolian origin is deeply rooted; it seems never to have been questioned; the stereotyped epithet of the town is Aionis. Indeed the lines of Mimnermus, with which Strabo defends his position, may be turned against Strabo; Mimnermus does not say, as he undoubtedly would have said, if he sided with Strabo, we recaptured the Ionian Smyrna from the Aeolians;" he says in a naïve straightforward fillibustering strain, “leaving Pylos, we (i. e., the Colophonians) came to Asia in our ships; we sate down at Colophon; and sallying thence, in accordance with our manifest destiny (ewv Bovλ), we took the Aeolian Smyrna." Furthermore, Mimnermus's Zμúpvnv Aloxida is not original with him; it goes back to a much more venerable authority, an epigram of the Homerids:1 Αἰολίδα Σμύρνην, ἁλιγείτονα, ποντοτίνακτον: and we find the same thing repeated by Callimachus, καὶ Σμύρνης ἐστὶν a Aloídos. Of prose-writers, besides Herodotus, Pausanias and Plutarch speak of the Aeolic origin as a settled thing; Pausanias 3 says: "Smyrna was one of the twelve Aeolic cities, and Ionians from Colophon took it and kept it;" and Plutarch, who touches the matter incidentally, quotes one Metrodorus (probably the Chian Metrodorus), as saying that "the Smyrnaeans were of old Aeolians." Besides these direct evidences, two strong arguments from probability may be adduced in support of Herodotus and against Strabo. In the first place, the Ephesians never were a colonizing people. No colony of Ephesus is any 1 Ep. 4, 7. 2 Ap. Athen. 7, p. 318, C. 3 7, 5. 4 Quaest. Symp. 6, 8, 1: τὸ δὲ τεκμήριον ἐλαμβάνομεν ἐκ τῶν Μητροδώρου Ιωνικῶν· ἱστορεῖ γὰρ ὅτι, κ. τ. λ. There is some doubt here as to what Metrodorus is meant, as the 'Iwvikά of M. are not elsewhere mentioned. Hecker proposes (in Schneidewin's Philologus, 1851, p. 421) to read 'Apreμidúpov, referring to Athen. 3, p. 111, D. We would suggest as a simpler change, to read Towikŵy for 'Iwvikov, and understand it as a citation from the Chian Metrodorus mentioned in Athen. 4, p. 184, Α: Μητρόδωρος δ ̓ ὁ Χῖος ἐν Τρωικοῖς φησιν, κ. τ. λ. An examination of the context in Plutarch will convince that this passage is likely to belong in the Τρωικά. where mentioned. Secondly, the importance attached in ancient times to particular numbers is well known, and especially to the number twelve. Counting Smyrna among the original Ionic cities, we find the Ionian league would embrace thirteen cities, the Aeolian eleven. Counting it among the Aeolic cities, we have twelve cities in each confederation, as in the old Etruscan confederation. The conclusion, therefore, to which we are forced is, that Smyrna was not settled from Ephesus. The testimony of Strabo has been followed in modern times by Karl Otfried Müller. The respect to which this great man's opinions on any subject are entitled, makes it necessary to consider his arguments, and show the fallacy of his conclusions. It is but fair to say that Müller touches this question incidentally only, in the course of a literary-historical investigation in his popular work, the History of Greek Literature. If his investigation had been a historical one, he would, doubtless, have come to a different conclusion. He shows that the Iliad and Odyssey contain both Aeolic and Ionic elements, the latter predominating. Homer is a native of Smyrna; and hence he accounts for the Aeolic-Ionic mixture, by assuming that "the two races met about the same time in Smyrna, although perhaps it may be allowed that the Ionians had somewhat the precedence in point of time, as the name of the town was derived from them. It is credible, although it is not distinctly stated, that for a long time the two populations occupied Smyrna jointly." He adopts the story of the Ephesian colony, and so positively as to say "Homer was an Ionian, belonging to one of the families which went from Ephesus to Smyrna." Nay, he even traces the Ionic inhabitants of the Ephesian suburb back to the Athenians, to the Athenae Atticae. With the Ephesian Smyrna the case is not so simple as Müller makes it. The probability is that Strabo's account is to be inverted; it is, in all probability, not the metropolis of the city of Smyrna, but itself a colony of the city of Smyrna. Other accounts of the origin of this suburb are, 1 Page 43, English translation. to be sure, preserved, but they are all dark and unsatisfactory. Such, for instance, is the account of Malacus; Malacus' says that some Samian slaves, driven from their home, settled near Ephesus, and called their settlement Samorna, the original form of Smyrna, the name being derived from the name of Samos. We must observe, however, that Malacus is here speaking, not of the founders of the suburb, but of the founders of Ephesus itself. The absurdity of supposing Ephesus itself to be a Samian colony is apparent. It is mere etymological play. But even granting that Malacus misquotes or misunderstands his authorities, and that the author he follows merely means to say that the Samian slaves settled not Ephesus, but the Smyrna of Ephesus, it is still difficult to account for the form of the name. In the absence of direct evidence then, we are left to one of two suppositions with regard to the Smyrna of Ephesus; first, that it was the seat of an ancient Lydian Amazon-cult, where the same deity occurs who is found in other places formerly occupied by the Lydians in the Aeolian Smyrna, in Myrina, where she appears in the two forms of Myrina and Smyrna, and in Cyme, where she appears in the form Myrina. Or secondly, we may assume that the cult is not indigenous at Ephesus, that it is not there a relic of the ante-Hellenic or Lydian period, but was transferred thither by the Greeks. The form of the name, which seems to bear a trace of Aeolism (Athen. 15, p. 688, C. μύρρα ἡ σμύρνα παρ' Αἰολεῦσι), is in favor of the latter theory. We may suppose that in some civil dissension a party of the Smyrnaeans were driven forth from the city, took refuge in Ephesus, and settling close by the town, like Horace's Salaminian Teucer, gave to a portion of the Ionic town the cherished name of their Aeolic home. The cult of Nemesis at Smyrna is cited by Müller in proof of the Ionic-Ephesus-Athens origin. Nemesis, says Müller, was worshipped at Smyrna; she was also worshipped at Rhamnus; hence, he infers that she was probably 1 Apud Athen. 6, p. 267, B. Cf. Guhl. Ephesiaca, p. 31, n. 37. transferred from Athens by way of Ephesus, to Smyrna. This is a specious argument at first sight, but critically analyzed, falls away to nothing. The proofs of the antiquity of this worship at Smyrna are not very strong; yet, perhaps, they are enough to convince us that she had a temple in the older prae-Alexandrian town. Pausanias informs us (9, 35, 2) that in the temple of the Nemeses at Smyrna were placed the Graces, the work of Bupalos. This passage alone is not decisive; it does not necessarily follow that the temple of Nemesis was in existence at the time of Bupalos, as the statues may have been transferred there at a later period. But as Nemesis in some of her types bears a near resemblance to Aphrodite, it is not improbable that Bupalos's Charites were designed as her attendants. And taken in connection with another passage of Pausanias (7, 5, 1), not much room is left for doubt. In the second passage Alexander is said to have slept near the temple of the Nemeses, consequently the temple existed before the new or Alexandrian city. These two passages of Pausanias are the only passages where the older Smyrnaean Nemesis is mentioned, but there seems no ground for questioning them. But whether this Nemesis came from Rhamnus is a very different question. If other facts proved the Ionian origin of Smyrna, then, indeed, we might suppose that in accordance with old Greek ways the Rhamnusian Nemesis was brought by the early colonists by way of Ephesus. Or, if there were any traces of a direct emigration from Attica or Rhamnus, we might infer that the Smyrnaean Nemeses came at some later period direct from Attica. But of this we have no evidence except the worthless talk of Aristides, and we are left to an entirely different theory. The origin of the Rhamnusian Nemesis herself must be more definitely established before we can draw conclusions about the Nemeses of Smyrna. Is this deity indigenous in Attica, or was she carried there from abroad? The evidences of a foreign origin are many. The traditions of the Greeks refer her back to Asia; the first temple of Nemesis, according to Callisthenes,' was built by Adrastus, near the river Aesepus, in Northern Mysia, and from him came the name of Adrastea. The etymology of Callisthenes is bad, his evidence for the origin of the cult is good. The Nemesis of Rhamnus bore the name of Upis ; 2 whether this is Hyperborean or Pelasgic we will not undertake to decide, but in either case it lies outside of the genuine Greek mythology. 3 The worship of Nemesis is said to have been introduced into Attica by king Erechtheus; 4 and the Egyptians cut on the cup held in the hand of Phidias's statue, dark as their connection may be with the goddess, point to an origin beyond sea. If we may infer then, that the Rhamnusian Nemesis was herself brought by some early migration from Asia to the Attic soil, which is the most natural hypothesis? That the Smyrnaean Nemesis went a round-about path from Asia to Rhamnus, from Rhamnus to Ephesus, and from Ephesus to that doubtful migration, to Smyrna? Or that she was to the manor born, indigenous to the soil and borrowed by the Greeks from the Leleges? Unquestionably the latter. Like the Amazon considered above, like the Artemis Tauropolus, and possibly like the Boubrostis who is found only at Smyrna, the Nemesis is a relic of the older Asiatic mythology. In fact the type of the Smyrnaean Nemesis differs from the Rhamnusian, and differs in such a way as to show that the Smyrnaean type is the older one; the Nemesis of Rhamnus, says Pausanias, had no wings; the Nemesis of Smyrna had.s The Smyrnaean deity therefore resembles the winged figures found on Asiatic monuments; 6 the Rhamnusian shows the anthropomorphic Greek element, which is certainly later. One argument more may be added as a cumulus, which might be enough without the preceding. The cult of Ne 1 Apud Strab. 13, p. 588. 2 Philostr. Her. 10. 8 Müller, Dorr. I. p. 387, English translation; Guhl, Eph. p. 80. 4 Suid. s. v. Ραμνουσία Νέμεσις. 5 On coins, to be sure, the Smyrnaean is also found without wings. Lenormant, in the Revue Archéol. 1850, n. 10, p. 639. |