Origins and Mythological Foundations
The foundation of Kolophon belongs to both the mytho-historical traditions of early Greek eastward migration and the archaeological horizon of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age in Western Anatolia. According to classical mythographers, the original settlement at the site was attributed to Cretans under the leadership of Rhakios, who settled near the prophetic spring at Claros before the arrival of mainland Greek refugees following the Trojan War. Greek mythology connects this early stratum to the Theban seer Teiresias through his daughter Manto, whose union with Rhakios produced the famed prophet Mopsos. Later Ionian migratory waves were credited with the formal foundation of the polis under the leadership of Damasichthon and Promethos, sons of the Athenian king Codrus, who led a coalition of Pylian and Attica-derived settlers.
Archaeological investigations around modern Değirmendere have confirmed occupation dating back to the Mycenaean era, evidenced by Mycenaean pottery and a Late Bronze Age tholos tomb identified in the vicinity of the urban site and the adjacent sanctuary of Claros. By the eighth century BC, Kolophon had established itself as an autonomous Greek polis and one of the primary member communities of the Ionian League, or Panionion. Located inland along a defensive ridge from which its name was derived (the Greek term 'kolophon' signifying a summit or ridge), the nascent city commanded the vital land corridor linking Smyrna with Ephesus and held uninterrupted access to the sea through its dependent coastal settlement at Notion.
Historical Development and Foreign Dominions
During the seventh and sixth centuries BC, Kolophon flourished as one of the most powerful and affluent poleis in the Aegean. The city waged aggressive regional campaigns, famously capturing the Aeolian city of Smyrna around 700 BC, an exploit preserved in the verses of the native elegiac poet Mimnermus and recorded by Herodotus. However, Kolophon's geographic accessibility from the interior made it vulnerable to continental Anatolian empires. King Gyges of Lydia captured the lower city around 665 BC, initiating a period of intermittent Lydian hegemony that was consolidated under King Alyattes and completed by Croesus in the mid-sixth century BC. Following the collapse of the Lydian kingdom in 546 BC, Cyrus the Great sent his general Harpagus to subjugate the Ionian cities, incorporating Kolophon into the Persian Empire as part of the satrapy of Sparda.
Kolophon regained political freedom following the Greco-Persian Wars and joined the Athenian-led Delian League, assessed at a substantial annual tribute of three talents on the Athenian quota lists. During the Peloponnesian War, severe political fragmentation (stasis) split the community. In 430 BC, a pro-Persian oligarchic faction enlisted the support of the Persian officer Itamanes and seized the upper city. Pro-Athenian citizens fled to Notion, but that harbor settlement in turn split into competing factions separated by a defensive wall. In 427 BC, the Athenian general Paches intervened, deceitfully luring and executing the mercenary commander Hippias, expelling the Medizing faction, and reorganizing Notion as an Athenian naval outpost populated by Kolophonian exiles. Persian dominance was restored under the King's Peace of 387 BC, under which Kolophon and its harbors were once more subjected to satrapal oversight. Alexander the Great liberated the city in 334 BC, restoring democratic institutions. In the Diadochi period, the city allied with Antigonus I Monophthalmus and undertook extensive fortifications. The definitive catastrophe occurred around 294 BC, when King Lysimachus seized the city, demolished parts of its perimeter, and forcibly transferred the populace to his refounded capital at Ephesus.
Territory, Topography, and Urban Extent
The core civic territory (chora) of Kolophon occupied the alluvial basin of the Ales River (modern Avgas Çayı), encircled by a ring of hills and bounded to the north by the coastal range south of Smyrna and to the south by Mount Gallesion. The urban center was located on a prominent ridge near the modern village of Değirmendere in the Menderes district of İzmir Province, Turkey. Surviving remains reveal a fortified acropolis surrounded by lower terraces, residential sectors, public monuments, and an extensive surrounding necropolis containing monumental tumuli and chamber tombs.
Kolophon's territorial structure was unusual among Ionian poleis because its main urban center was situated approximately fifteen kilometers from the coast. To secure maritime connectivity, the polis maintained the fortified coastal town of Notion, often referred to as 'Colophon-by-the-Sea' or 'New Colophon'. Between inland Kolophon and coastal Notion lay the sacred valley of Claros, an integral part of Kolophon's civic space that accommodated processions and pan-Hellenic visitors traveling inland from the harbor. In the late fourth century BC, between approximately 311 and 306 BC, the polis passed an ambitious decree to construct a massive stone circuit wall enclosing both the older urban hill and expansive adjoining sectors, an undertaking recorded in a monumental stone subscription decree discovered during modern excavations.
Government and Civic Institutions
Throughout its independent existence, Kolophon experienced several shifts between oligarchic and democratic governance. In the Archaic period, the state was ruled by an exclusive timocratic oligarchy. In his 'Politics', Aristotle cited Kolophon as an archetype of an oligarchy based on wealth and landownership, where supreme civic authority was restricted to a select class known as the 'Thousand' (the hippotrophoi), who possessed the wealth required to maintain warhorses and land holdings. This aristocratic council dominated civic decision-making and controlled magistracies, directing foreign policy and domestic justice.
Athenian influence during the fifth century BC fostered the development of a democratic faction, but democratic stability was repeatedly undermined by civil strife and pro-Persian dynasts. Following the expulsion of Persian control in 334 BC, the polis reorganized under a fully developed democratic constitution typical of Hellenistic western Anatolia. Inscriptions from the late fourth century BC document the operation of the sovereign Popular Assembly (Demos), the Council (Boule), a college of prytaneis who prepared civic business, elected generals (strategoi), city treasurers, and specialized boards of lawgivers (nomothetai) and wall-commissioners (teichopoioi). The citizen body was distributed into ancestral tribes (phylai) and civic subdivisions, which voted by unit in the assembly and maintained registers of legitimate citizens and resident metics.
Society, Religion, and Cultural Life
Archaic Kolophonian society was famed throughout the Mediterranean for its extreme luxury (habrosyne) and aristocratic refinement, features that became legendary in classical literature. The native philosopher Xenophanes (c. 570-478 BC) famously criticized his fellow citizens for adopting luxurious Lydian fashions, recounting how members of the governing class paraded through the agora draped in purple cloaks, adorned with elaborate hairstyles, and drenched in exotic perfumes before their excesses precipitated civic decline. Beyond social opulence, Kolophon made lasting contributions to Greek poetry and philosophy, producing the pioneering elegiac poet Mimnermus in the late seventh century BC, the pre-Socratic monotheistic critic Xenophanes, the epic and elegiac poet Antimachus in the early fourth century BC, and later the Hellenistic poet Hermesianax. The city was also among the most prominent claimants to have been the birthplace of Homer.
Religious life was deeply intertwined with the administration of the oracle at Claros, where an underground chamber and sacred spring served as the focal point for Apollo Clarios. The sanctuary drew embassies from across Greece, Anatolia, and later the Roman world to consult the inspired prophet. Within the civic pantheon, Apollo was honored alongside Artemis Claria, Athena Polias, and the Meter (Mother Goddess), who possessed a dedicated Metroon within the city walls. An unusual ritual attested for Kolophon was the sacrifice of black female dogs to Hecate (the goddess of the underworld and crossroads), a practice shared in the ancient Greek world only with Sparta.
Economy, Coinage, and Trade
Kolophon's economy rested on a diversified base of fertile agriculture, equine husbandry, specialized forestry, and maritime commerce. The alluvial plains along the Ales River produced abundant yields of cereal grains, olives, and vines. The expansive pasturelands of the interior supported large-scale horse breeding, providing the foundation for Kolophon's famous cavalry regiments, which were considered among the finest in the Greek world and frequently turned the tide of regional conflicts. In addition, the pine forests of the surrounding mountain slopes yielded high-grade pine resin, prized across antiquity for medical uses and as an adhesive; it gave rise to the Latin term 'colophonia resina' (the origin of the modern word colophony, denoting rosin used for musical bowstrings).
Monetary production began at Kolophon in the late sixth century BC, initially on the Persic standard, issuing silver fractions depicting the head of Apollo on the obverse and an incuse punch or lyre (kithara) on the reverse. During the late fourth century BC, the mint expanded under Macedonian suzerainty, producing silver drachms bearing the name of Alexander the Great and Philip III Arrhidaeus. The harbor at Notion provided a bustling outlet for the export of resin, agricultural surpluses, and manufactured ceramics, while generating revenue through customs duties on merchant ships plying the north-south trade routes between Smyrna, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes.
Decline, Amalgamation, and Historical Legacy
The forcible synoikism imposed by King Lysimachus in the 290s BC dealt an irreparable blow to inland Kolophon as an independent urban capital. Although the fall of Lysimachus at the Battle of Corupedium in 281 BC enabled surviving Kolophonians to return to their ancestral land, the historic inland city never recovered its Archaic splendor. The primary civic and economic center was permanently transferred to coastal Notion, which came to be known in Hellenistic and Roman official documents as 'Colophon on the Sea' (Kolophon epi Thalatte), while the original site became known as 'Upper Colophon' (Kolophon he Ano). In 188 BC, under the Treaty of Apamea, the Roman Republic rewarded the Kolophonians of Notion for their loyalty during the Syrian War against Antiochus III by declaring them a free and immune city (civitas libera et immunis).
Despite the physical reduction of the inland settlement, Kolophon left an indelible mark on Mediterranean language and thought. In classical antiquity, the prowess of the city's cavalry was so decisive that the Greek phrase 'to put the Colophon on it' (ton Kolophona epitithenai) became a widely quoted proverb meaning to apply the finishing touch or definitive stroke to any matter. Centuries later, early European printers adopted the word 'colophon' to designate the concluding imprint at the end of a manuscript or printed volume recording publisher and production details. In intellectual history, the bold theological and epistemological inquiries of Xenophanes of Kolophon challenged traditional Homeric anthropomorphism and laid essential foundations for Greek rationalism and metaphysics.
References
- An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis. Entry 848 (Kolophon), pp. 1085-1087
- Colophon | Ionian City, Greek Ruins & Archaeological Site. Main article
- Colophon (city). Historical and topographical overview
- History: Notion Archaeological Project. Colophon and Notion historical survey