Some sites in Asia Minor and the islands adjoining, such cities as
Samos, Camirus in Rhodes, and the Ionian colonies on the Black Sea, have
furnished us with a mass of ware of the Ionian class, but it seldom
bears interesting subjects; it is essentially decorative. For Ionian
ware which has closer relation to Greek mythology and history we must
turn elsewhere. The cemeteries of the great Etruscan cities, Caere in
particular, have preserved for us a large number of vases, which are now
generally recognized as Ionian in design and drawing, though they may in
some cases be only Italian imitations of Ionian imported ware. Thus has
been filled up what was a blank page in the history of early Greek art.
The Ionian painting is unrestrained in character, characterized by a
licence not foreign to the nature of the race, and wants the
self-control and moderation which belong to Doric art, and to Attic art
after the first.
Some of the most interesting examples of early Ionic painting are found
on the sarcophagi of Clazomenae. In that city in archaic times an
exceptional custom prevailed of burying the dead in great coffins of
terra-cotta adorned with painted scenes from chariot-racing, war and the
chase. The British Museum possesses some remarkable specimens, which are
published in A. S. Murray's _Terra-Cotta Sarcophagi of the British
Museum_. On one of them he sees depicted a battle between Cimmerian
invaders and Greeks, the former accompanied to the field by their great
war-dogs. In some of the representations of hunting on these sarcophagi
the hunters ride in chariots, a way of hunting quite foreign to the
Greeks, but familiar to us from Assyrian wall-sculptures. We know that
the life of the Ionians before the Persian conquest was refined and not
untinged with luxury, and they borrowed many of the stately ways of the
satraps of the kings of Assyria and Persia.
[Illustration: Furtwangler, _Goldfund v. Vettersfelde_.