IONIA
A QUEST

FREYA STARK

JOHN MURRAY: LONDON
1954

First edition.
When Freya Stark travelled along the western coast of Turkey in 1952 she met only one other tourist. Today, this region is the most popular and well-travelled in the country, but to travel with Stark - whose aim was to 'create a guide-book in time' - is to experience Turkey in a richer and more inspiring way than any modern guide or history can provide. In the ruins and vanished cities of Ionia lay the record of human history - of what, Stark believed, made us what we are today. Her longing to know more, to unearth the living from the wreckage of the past and to discover the ingredients that shaped the ancient world drove her forward. With Herodotus as her travelling companion, she began her quest in Smyrna and traced a route through the ancient cities of Asia Minor, which were haunted by echoes of Odysseus and Alexander the Great and by the poets and philosophers, musicians and mathematicians who flourished in this world. Wandering beyond the boundaries of travel, Stark entered into the soul of ancient Ionia, examining the ever-present tension between East and West and the elements of religion, society and commerce that forged the culture of a civilisation. A journey through the ancient world that resonates in the modern, Freya Stark's 'Ionia' is travel writing at its most elegant and history at its most dynamic - a powerful and beautifully-rendered classic of twentieth-century literature.

CONTENTS
FOREWORD
SYNOPSIS OF HISTORY
DATES
DAWN IN IONIA SMYRNA. The Family in the Levant
CLAZOMENAE. The Philosophic Weather
TEOS. Anacreon and the Poetry of Living
ERYTHRAE. Exile and Slavery
CHIOS. Ingredients of Empire
MYRINA. 'New Harvests Cover the Land'
GRYNBIUM. Solitude and Patriotism
PITANE. Toleration and Truth
PERGAMUM. The Raiders of the Border
CYME. The Phrygian Mood
PHOCAEA. Decision
COLOPHON. The Position of Women
CLARUS AND NOTIUM. Xenophanes and Reason .
SARDIS. The Commerce of Lydia
EPHESUS. Commerce and the Unexpected
THE PANIONIUM. Symbols
PRIENE. Greatness in Art
THE ORACLE OF DIDYMA. Ecclesiastical Tradition
MILETUS. The Aegean
HERACLEIA. The Myth
MAGNESIA ON MAEANDER. The Persian Administration
APHRODISIAS. The Ease of Life
HIERAPOLIS AND LAODICEA
REFERENCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

23 x 15 cm. xxiv + 263 pp + monochrome photo plates + map. With 2 newspaper cutting about the author loosely inserted.

Very good condition. The dust jacket is very age tanned, worn and has been laminated. Page edges age toned but otherwise clean and tidy.