About SMYRNA wonderful stories were current in antiquity. According to one of them, it was originally an Ionian settlement, and, considering its situation between Ephesus and Phocaea, this is most probable; afterwards it is stated to have passed into the hands of the Aeolians, from whom it was taken again, according to Herodotus, by the Ionians. It is then scarcely mentioned at all until after the time of Alexander. Antigonus the one-eyed in reality built Smyrna anew; nearly all that is related about its early history is legendary. Its site was so happily chosen, that among all the towns on that coast it was the most imperishable, and continually increased. Its harbour is very excellent, but had been overlooked in an unaccountable manner ever since its destruction by the Lydians. It was, particularly during the period that Ephesus was governed by Egypt, that Smyrna, being under the dominion of Syria, rose to eminence. During the unfortunate times of the Roman wars, the Smyrnaeans behaved with great prudence, as we see particularly from their treaty with the Magnesians. Under the Romans, and that even under the first emperors, Smyrna, alternately with Ephesus, was often the seat of the proconsul. The Romans procured its admission into the Ionian confederacy as the thirteenth town. According to the ancient notions, the Ionians would not have ventured to go beyond the sacred and established number, and in case of emergency, they would have incorporated a smaller town with a larger one, e.g., Lebedos with Ephesus or Colophon; but those scruples were then easily got over, and hence we now find thirteen Ionian towns mentioned in inscriptions, coins, etc. In like manner, Athens, in later times, had thirteen tribes, and a senate of the corresponding number of 650. Smyrna was often destroyed, once in a very fearful manner by Tamerlane, but it soon recovered. The correct orthography of the name, both with the Greeks and the Romans, is Zmyrna, in the same manner as they wrote Zmaragdos. The meetings of the twelve Ionian towns took place at a spot called _Panionium_, below the promontory of Mycale, which formed about the central point among them. These meetings gave rise to a permanent town with a prytaneum, in which the meetings were held. This union among the Ionians was not of a political nature, though it seems to have been the original intention that it should be; but the autonomy of the individual states did not permit this, and hence Panionium was only a place for agones. There were several more small towns in Ionia, which I will pass over here. Mount Mimas, a branch of mount Taurus, rises precipitously above Erythrae (ἠνεμόεις Μίμας in Homer). AEOLIS.