The second chapter provides an analysis of the Ionian Koinon, the association of the thirteen cities of Ionia, as one of the most direct and explicit channels for expressing Ionian cultural identity. Its festivals and ritual gatherings served both internally and externally as the most important means for making Ionianness visible. By discharging a koinon office, the civic elites of the koinon’s member cities were able to showcase their loyalty to a shared cultural affiliation and at the same time to engage in an inner-Ionian competition for euergetic prestige. This chapter also includes the first prosopographical study of all attested officials of the Ionian Koinon. It is concluded by a comparison with Hadrian’s Panhellenion as another institutionalised confederation which united Greek cities and fostered an ethno-cultural definition of Greekness in the 2nd c. AD.

The first chapter provides a brief historical overview of Ionia as a region, discusses its geographical extent as represented in the works of the authors Strabo and Pliny from the Roman Imperial period, and analyses its place in relation to the superimposed administrative units of the conventus districts and, on a larger scale, within the framework of the province of Asia: both of these transcended the traditional boundaries of Ionia and thus potentially challenged its perceived coherence. The use of city-titles making explicit reference to Ionia is highlighted at the end of the chapter as part of the intercity rivalries consciously imitating references to the larger frame of the province of Asia.

We cannot be sure when Ionianness ceased to be employed as a form of cultural capital altogether. The last extant testimonies from the period covered by this monograph stem roughly from the mid 3rd c. ad: I.Priene2 61 refers to the city as ἡ λαμπροτάτη Πριηνέων Ἰώνων πόλις (‘the most splendid city of the Ionian Prieneans’), while coins from Teos bear the inscription ΤΗΙΩΝ ΙΩΝΩΝ on the reverse (‘Of the Ionian Teians’, under Severus Alexander and Valerian II), and coins from Samos the inscription ΠΡΩΤΩΝ ΙΩΝΙΑΣ (‘first of Ionia’, under Decius). The last attestation of the Ionian Koinon is the coin series issued in its name at Kolophon (under Trebonianus Gallus and Valerian, discussed in Chapter 3.1.2). The lack of later similar testimonies must certainly also be ascribed to the general decline of the epigraphic habit and of civic coinage in this period, which can be seen as symptoms of the profound changes in Greek civic culture occurring from the mid 3rd c. ad onwards.2

That Ionianness was used as a form of cultural capital also outside of Ionia is demonstrated in the sixth chapter which turns attention to the littorals of the Black Sea, where a number of colonies from the Ionian cities founded in Archaic times cultivated their distinct cultural identities even in the Roman period. Further, the cities of Isinda in Pisidia and Synnada in Phrygia started to call themselves Ionians on their civic coins from the 2nd c. AD on. These examples of mythological kinship affiliations demonstrate that Ionianness remained a valid cultural resource in the Roman Imperial period employed to bestow prestige on cities in the competitive environment of the Roman provinces.

The first part of the third chapter investigates the role that Ionianness played in the cultic life of cities in Roman Ionia, and examines whether there were religious elements (cult epithets, festivals, rituals) which the Ionian cities had in common and which distinguished them from the other Greeks, particularly those in Asia Minor. The second part of the chapter is dedicated to the study of Ionian (foundation) myths as attested in the Roman period; it contextualises them within the discourses of their contemporary society in order to establish their significance for the construction of Ionian identities. Juxtaposing the analyses of the two complementary aspects of ritual and myth allows us to uncover projections of cultural identity in different contexts and media, and to better understand the place Ionianness occupied in the individual, civic, and regional collective imagination.

The fourth chapter starts with exploring the extent to which an awareness of the potential cultural capital of calendrical systems can be detected in the cities of Roman Ionia, both in regard to cyclical (calendars, months) and linear (eponymous dating, eras) constructions of time. The Ionian cities appear as highly conservative in maintaining their traditional calendars and month names, the latter being clearly distinguishable from month names of cities in other parts of the Greek world through their characteristic morphology. Similarly, the Ionian cities never replaced their traditional eponymous year dating with an era-based dating as many other communities in Asia Minor are attested to have done. An onomastic study forms the second part of the chapter. Based on all the personal names attested in the cities of Roman Ionia it can be shown that names of specific Ionian flavour continue to be attested in the Roman Imperial period.

One of the most prominent and seemingly most straightforward criteria used to distinguish different ethno-cultural groups or subdivide them further was the existence of a distinct dialect, to which the fifth chapter is dedicated. Because of the unrepresentative picture we get from the nature of the surviving epigraphic evidence, we cannot be sure whether some form of the Ionic dialect or accent continued to be spoken in the Roman period. Yet, the continued creative engagement with the Ionic dialect in the fields of historiography and medical writing by authors from all over the Greek world – and not only as imitations of individual canonical authors, but with a clear awareness that they were writing in Ionic Greek – shows that it maintained its very prestigious position as a traditional literary language and that it could still be considered as a meaningful cultural resource.

The Introduction anchors the main sujet of the book within a longue durée perspective from Archaic Ionia, and the dominant scholarly interest in this period, to the role of Ionia in 20th c. political and identity discourses. Stereotypes associated with Ionians by their ancient contemporaries are analysed here as one important aspect of the Ionians’ collective perception. The Introduction also provides an overview of the concepts of identity, ethnicity, and cultural identity as applied in the field of Ancient History, as well as brief summaries of the individual chapters’ contents.