Note 304 — Chapter XIII · ASIATIC IONIANS.

Strabo, xiii, p. 621. See Niebuhr, Kleine Historische Schriften, p. 371, O. Müller, Etrusker, Einleitung ii, 5, p. 80. The evidence on which Müller’s conjecture is built seems, however, unusually slender, and the identity of Tyrrhênos and Torrhêbos, or the supposed confusion of the one with the other, is in no way made out. Pelasgians are spoken of in Trallês and Aphrodisias as well as in Ninoê (Steph. Byz. v. Νινόη), but this name seems destined to present nothing but problems and delusions.

Respecting Magnêsia on the Mæander, consult Aristot. ap. Athen. iv, p. 173, who calls the town a colony from Delphi. But the intermediate settlement of these colonists in Krête, or even the reality of any town called Magnêsia in Krête, appears very questionable: Plato’s statement (Legg. iv, 702; xi, 919) can hardly be taken as any evidence. Compare O. Müller, History of the Dorians, book ii, ch. 3; Hoeckh, Kreta, book iii, vol. ii, p. 413. Müller gives these “Sagen” too much in the style of real facts: the worship of Apollo at Magnêsia on the Mæander (Paus. x, 32, 4) cannot be thought to prove much, considering how extensively that god was worshipped along the Asiatic coast, from Lykia to Troas.

The great antiquity of this Grecian establishment was recognized in the time of the Roman emperors; see Inscript. No. 2910 in Boeckh, Corp. Ins.