Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/188

 172 mSTORTT OF GREECE. to the scale introduced by Pheidon of Argos, the name of ^Egin- sean. The fact of its being so called indicates a time when t.iese two Euboean cities surpassed Athens in maritime power and ex- tended commercial relations, and when they stood among the foremost of the Ionic cities throughout Greece. The Euboic scale, after having been debased by Solon, in reference to coinage and money, still continued in use at Athens for merchandise : tli* Attic mercantile mina retained its primitive Euboic weight. 1 CHAPTER XIII. ASIATIC IONIANS. THERE existed at the commencement of historical Greece, in 776 B. c., besides the lonians in Attica and the Cyclades, twelve Ionian cities of note on or near the coast of Asia Minor, besides a few others less important. Enumerated from south to north, they stand, Miletus, My us, Priene, Samos, Ephesus, Kolophon, Lebedus, Teos, Erythroe, Chios, Klazomenae, Phokaea. That these cities, the great ornament of the Ionic name, were founded by emigrants from European Greece, there is no reason to doubt. How, or when, they were founded, we have no history to tell us ; the legend, which has already been set forth in a pre- ceding chapter, gives us a great event called the Ionic migration, referred by chronologists to one special year, one hundred and forty years after the Trojan war. This massive grouping belongs to the character of legend, the JEolic and Ionic emigrations, as well as the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, are each invested with unity, and imprinted upon the imagination as the results of a single great impulse. But such is not the character of the historical colonies : when we come to relate the Italian and Sici- lian emigrations, it will appear that each colony has its own sep- arate nativity and causes of existence. In the case of the Ionic See Bocckh's Metrologic, c. 8 and 9.