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The Ionians were a people who migrated from western Anatolia, Attica and other Greek territories directly following the Dorian immigration into mainland Greece (roughly 1,000 BC). They were the first Greek-speaking peoples to have reached mainland Greece and are thought to have been the precursors and creators of Mycenaean Culture. The Ionians, prior to their arrival in Greece, were considered subjects of the Persian Empire in Anatolia. Once the Ionians immigrated to Greece, their position within Greek society was moderately compromised due to their former relations with Persia (a known enemy of the Greeks). Militaristically, they were considered by the vast majority of Greek society (from 450 BC onward) to be soft compared to the Dorians and other Greek militaristic factions. Whether this view was perpetuated by Ionian and Persian politics, or by the racial view of the Greeks is debatable (more than likely a combination of both). What is known is that by the year 450 BC, the Greeks (at the time of Herodotus) had invented a detailed ethnological theory of its people, which placed the Ionians with the aboriginal elements of ancient Greece, commonly referred to as the Pelasgoi.
The Ionians ruled parts of Euboea, Attica, most of the islands of the Aegean Sea, as well as the western coast of Asia Minor. Many of its cities were instrumental in setting up trade routes with such places as the Black Sea. From a cultural perspective, the Ionians added a great deal to classical Greece. From the Ionian and Attican dialects, came the introduction of the language Ionian-Attic, which is a combination of both dialects which permeated most of Ionia and many of the Ionian islands; it also became the almost exclusive written language used by historians, writers, scientists and philosophers of the 6th Century BC. In addition to language, the Ionians also maintained the adage of the Homeric epics, and early iambic poetry. By the 6th Century BC, the Ionians had entered areas of architecture, biology, historiography, philosophy and many other areas of Greek culture which permeated the age of Classical Greece.
