These two great poets, who both flourished about 600 B.C., their predecessors Archilochus, Arion, Callinus, and Terpander, and their successors of the next generation Anacreon and Simonides, are the best representatives of the early culture of Ionia. To complete the picture we must remember her philosophers. Besides Thales and Bias, the two Sages (Bias, by the way, is credited with having proposed that the Ionians should leave their homes _en masse_ and found a united state in the west), there were students of natural philosophy like Anaximander, who made the first map and the first sundial and explained the evolution of life from chaos by the interaction of heat and cold, Heracleitus of Ephesus, “the weeping philosopher,” or Hecatæus of Miletus, the grandfather of history and geography. Hecatæus first explained away the gods as only deified mortals of past ages, a doctrine afterwards called Euhemerism. This was the Ionian attitude of scepticism which doubtless is to be discerned in Homer’s attitude to the gods. Even Sappho, the worshipper of Aphrodite, says in one fragmentary line: “I know not what the gods are: two notions have I....” Language is the easiest medium for art. We must not be surprised to find this high poetic and philosophic standard accompanied chronologically by plastic work, still to be called archaic, which shows the artist painfully struggling with his [Illustration: _Mansell & Co._ Fig. 1. SCULPTURED COLUMN FROM THE OLD TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS AT EPHESUS _Mansell & Co._ FIG. 2. RELIEF FROM THE HARPY TOMB, NORTH SIDE PLATE XXX] material. Though Miletus was already growing rich with commerce the Ionian coin types are still very primitive. It is generally believed that coinage was invented by the Lydians in the seventh century, but for a long time the marks upon their coins were only mechanical impressions. One of the earliest attempts at an artistic motive is the coin found at Halicarnassus bearing a stag and an inscription which seems to mean “I am the mark of Phanes.” We know of a Phanes at Halicarnassus late in the sixth century, but this must be the token of an ancestor of his. Most of these coins are of electrum, a natural mixture of gold and silver. [Illustration: Coin of Phanes] Of the sculpture of this region we must be content with two examples. One is the so-called Harpy Tomb from Xanthus, in Lycia.[37] It shows us the “harpies” conceived as angels of death--by no means malignant, as the harpies afterwards became--carrying away the dead. Perhaps it would be better to call them Kēres, or Fates. In the centre of this north side is the dead warrior yielding up his helmet to Hades. On the west side the Queen of the Dead (Persephone) sits in majesty. Over the door is the common heraldic motive of the suckling goat, and to the right of her three worshippers bring offerings of poppies and sesame to another seated goddess. Archæologists date this monument in the latter half of the sixth century.