Ionian school

School of Greek philosophers of the 6th–5th century BC, including Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heracleitus, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, Archelaus, and Hippon. Though Ionia was the original center of their activity, they differed so greatly from one another in their conclusions that they cannot truly be said to represent a specific school of philosophy, but their common concern to explain phenomena in terms of matter or physical forces distinguished them from later thinkers.

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Part of the Mediterranean Sea lying between Greece, Sicily, and Italy. Though once considered part of the Adriatic Sea, to which it connects by the Strait of Otranto, it is now considered a separate body. The Mediterranean reaches its greatest depth (16,000 ft or 4,900 m) in the Ionian south of Greece. Along its eastern shore are the Ionian Islands.

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Group of seven Greek islands (pop., 2001: 214,274) in the Ionian Sea. They include Corfu, Cephalonia, Zacynthus, Leucas, Ithaca, Cythera, and Paxos and have a combined land area of 891 sq mi (2,307 sq km). Controlled by Venice in the 15th and 16th centuries, they were taken by Russian and Turkish forces in 1799. In 1815 the Treaty of Paris placed them under the control of Britain; the British ceded them to Greece in 1864.

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