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Wellsprings

Smyrna

Ionia (Asia Minor)

Smyrna, modern İzmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey, was an ancient Greek city refounded in the fourth century BCE and, under Rome, a leading port of the province of Asia. It was a centre of rhetoric: the sophist Marcus Antonius Polemon taught there, the orator Aelius Aristides was closely associated with it, and it was one of several places claiming to be Homer's birthplace. Its church is one of the seven addressed in the Book of Revelation, and its second-century bishop Polycarp, to whom Ignatius of Antioch wrote and whom Irenaeus knew in his youth, was martyred there. The mathematician Theon of Smyrna and the epic poet Quintus Smyrnaeus take their names from the city.

12 most-discussed ideas

Teachers who lived here

Works composed here

Ideas shaped here

Concepts most frequently discussed in the works composed at Smyrna. Click any to trace the idea across time and place.

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