Smyrna was founded as a Greek colony more than a thousand years before Christ; but that ancient Aeolian

Smyrna was soon captured by Ionian Greeks, and made into an Ionian colony. Ionian Smyrna was a great

city, whose dominion extended to the east far beyond the valley, and whose armies contended on even

terms against the power of Lydia. Battles fought against the Lydians on the banks of the Hermus are

mentioned by the Smyrnaean poet Mimnermus in the seventh century. But Lydian power with its centre at

Sardis was increasing during that period, and Smyrna gradually gave way before it, until finally the Greek

city was captured and destroyed about 600 BC by King Alyattes. In one sense Smyrna was now dead; the

Greek city had ceased to exist; and it was only in the third century that it was restored to the history of

Hellenic enterprise in Asia. There was, however, a State named Smyrna during that long interval, when the

Ionian Smyrna was merely a historical memory. It is mentioned in an inscription of 368 BC as a place of some

consequence; but it was no longer what the Greeks called a city. It was essential to the Greek idea of a city

that it should have internal freedom, that it should elect its own magistrates to manage its own affairs, and

that its citizens should have the education and the spirit which spring from habitually thinking imperially.

This Asiatic Smyrna between about 600 and 290 was, as Strabo says, a loose aggregate of villagers living in

various settlements scattered over the plain and the surrounding hills; it possessed no sovereign power or

self-governing institutions; and it has left no trace on history. Aristides, however, says that there was a

town in that period intermediate in position between the old and the later city.

Smyrna was treated more harshly than Ephesus by the Lydian conquerors: apparently the reason was that it

was more typically Greek and more hostile to the Asiatic spirit of the Lydian realm, whereas the native

Anatolian element was stronger in Ephesus. The purely Greek Smyrna could not be made to wear Lydian

harness, and was destroyed. The half-Asiatic Ephesus was easily changed into a useful Lydian town

without the complete sacrifice of autonomy and individuality.

The design was attributed to Alexander the Great of marking the triumph of Hellenism by refounding Greek

Smyrna; and later coins of Smyrna show his dream, in which the Smyrnaean goddesses, the two Nemeseis or

Fates, appeared to him and suggested to him that plan. But it was left for King Lysimachus, after Antigonus

had made a beginning, to carry the design into effect. His refoundation of Smyrna and of Ephesus was a part

of a great scheme, the completion of which was prevented by his death. The new Hellenic Smyrna was in a

different place from the old Ionian city. The earlier city had been on a steep lofty hill overhanging on the

north the extreme eastern recess of the gulf: the new city was on the southeast shore of the gulf about two

miles away. The aim in the former was security against sudden attack, but there could never have been

beside it a very good harbour. The later city was intended to be a maritime and trading centre, a good

harbour and a convenient starting-point for a land-road to the east. The type of a merchant ship, which

appears on its coins, as on those of Ephesus (Figure 16, chapter 17), indicates its maritime character: see

also Figure 22 in this chapter.

Its maritime power was maintained by two ports. One was a small land-locked harbour, the narrow entrance

of which could be closed by a chain: the other was probably only the adjacent portion of the gulf which

served as a mooring-ground. The inner harbour lay in the heart of the modern city, where the bazaars now

stand. In that situation, half surrounded by houses and close under the hill of Pagos, it was readily liable to

grow shallower and to be ultimately filled up; but the small ancient ships found it so useful that the harbour

authorities had to keep it carefully. In 1402 Tamerlane besieged the lower city, which was held by the

Knights of Rhodes with their stronghold in a castle commanding the harbour; and he blocked the entrance

by a mole in the process of his operations. After the entrance was once closed, the negligent government of

the now Turkish city was not likely to try to reopen it; moreover as the size of ships increased, the

usefulness of so small a harbour ceased. Thus the natural process of filling up the old harbour went on

unchecked; and it has long disappeared, though it was still visible in the middle of the eighteenth century

and even later.