Concluding Remarks

Summary

We cannot be sure when Ionianness ceased to be employed as a form of cultural capital altogether. The last extant testimonies from the period covered by this monograph stem roughly from the mid 3rd c. ad: I.Priene² 61 refers to the city as ἡ λαμπροτάτη Πριηνέων Ἰώνων πόλις (‘the most splendid city of the Ionian Prieneans’), while coins from Teos bear the inscription ΤΗΙΩΝ ΙΩΝΩΝ on the reverse (‘Of the Ionian Teians’, under Severus Alexander and Valerian II), and coins from Samos the inscription ΠΡΩΤΩΝ ΙΩΝΙΑΣ (‘first of Ionia’, under Decius). The last attestation of the Ionian Koinon is the coin series issued in its name at Kolophon (under Trebonianus Gallus and Valerian, discussed in Chapter 3.1.2). The lack of later similar testimonies must certainly also be ascribed to the general decline of the epigraphic habit and of civic coinage in this period, which can be seen as symptoms of the profound changes in Greek civic culture occurring from the mid 3rd c. ad onwards.²