colophon

Colophon ( Greek Κολοφών ) was in ancient Greece one of the largest cities in the Anatolian countryside Ionia . It was near the present-day village of Değirmendere in the Turkish administrative district İzmir , between İzmir, ancient Smyrna (in the north) and Ephesus (in the south), north of the port city of Notion .

As one of the mother cities of the Ionians , Kolophon was part of the Ionian League (Dodekapolis). Thirteen kilometers south of Kolophon was the famous oracle of Klaros . The conifers around Colophon supplied the resin colophony , with which today, among other things, the horsehair covering of bow ties is rubbed.

According to legend, the city was founded by two sons of Kodros , a mythical king of Athens . Her most famous sons are the philosopher Xenophanes , the poet Mimnermos and the painter Apelles . Colophon was also one of the Ionian cities that competed to have been Homer's birthplace .

Colophon was considered one of the richest cities of Ionia in archaic times - with its own local Kolophon calendar - and was compared with the Lower Italian Sybaris , but largely lost its prosperity in classical times. After 479 BC The city became a member of the Attic League of Nations ; 430 BC After party battles she became Persian and in 409 again sided with Athens . In 404, Colophon fell again under Persian suzerainty, and then in the 4th century BC. To share the general fate of Ionia. Lysimachus , one of the diadochs of Alexander the Great , forced around 300 BC The population moved to Ephesus , which was built in a new place under his command. With this, the city of Kolophon lost its importance, even if it was after Lysimachus' death in 281 BC. Was rebuilt. Colophon united with the port city of Notion, but lost all meaning in the Hellenistic period.

Only a few remains of the city have survived. A probably Mycenaean domed tomb from the 13th or 12th century BC was found nearby . BC ( SH III B or III C), which apparently also contained Sub-Mycenaean ceramics . In another tomb, a Mycenaean knife and a glass bead in the Aegean style were found.

literature

William L. MacDonald: Colophon, Ionia, Turkey . In: Richard Stillwell et al. a. (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-03542-3 .
George Ewart Bean : Asia Minor . Volume 1. Aegean Turkey from Pergamon to Didyma. 5th edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-17-009678-8 , pp. 186-188.
Leicester B. Holland: Colophon . In: Hesperia. The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Volume 13, No. 2, April-June 1944, pp. 91-171.
Carl Schuchhardt : Colophon, Notion and Klaros. In: Athenische Mitteilungen 11, 1886, pp. 398–434 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).

Web links

Inscriptions from colophon
Coins of Colophon (Greek)

Individual evidence

↑ To summarize the Mycenaean finds in Kolophon: Jorrit M. Kelder: Mycenaeans in Western Anatolia. In: JP Stronk, MD de Weerd (Ed.): TALANTA. Proceedings of the Dutch Archeological and Historical Society XXXVI-XXXVII (2004-2005). 2006, pp. 59, 64; on (sub) Mycenaean ceramics also p. 68.

38.115555555556 27.142222222222Coordinates: 38 ° 7 ' N , 27 ° 9' E

[1] To summarize the Mycenaean finds in Kolophon: Jorrit M. Kelder: Mycenaeans in Western Anatolia. In: JP Stronk, MD de Weerd (Ed.): TALANTA. Proceedings of the Dutch Archeological and Historical Society XXXVI-XXXVII (2004-2005). 2006, pp. 59, 64; on (sub) Mycenaean ceramics also p. 68.