Iron Age According to
Apollodorus and
Proclus, the mythical seer
Calchas died at Colophon after the end of the
Trojan War.
Strabo names
Clarus as the place of his death, which would later be a cult center in the territory of Colophon. An oracle had it that he would die when he would meet a better seer than himself. As Calchas and the other heroes on their way home from Troy came upon the seer
Mopsus in Colophon, the two competed in their mantic qualities. Calchas couldn't equal Mopsus' skills as a seer, being a son of
Apollo and
Manto, so he died. In Greek antiquity
Damasichthon and
Promethus, two sons of
Codrus,
King of Athens, established a colony there. (Promethus later killed Damasichthon; he then escaped to
Naxos, and died there, but his corpse was brought back to Colophon by Damasichthon's sons, and subsequently lay near Colophon). It was the birthplace of the philosopher
Xenophanes and the poets
Antimachus and
Mimnermus. Colophon was the strongest of the Ionian cities and renowned both for its cavalry and for the inhabitants' luxurious lifestyle, until
Gyges of Lydia conquered it in the 7th century BC. Colophon then went into decline and was eclipsed by neighbouring
Ephesus and by the rising naval power of Ionia,
Miletus.
Classical Age After the death of
Alexander the Great,
Perdiccas expelled the Athenian settlers on
Samos to Colophon, including the family of
Epicurus, who joined them there after completing his military service. In the 3rd century BC, it was destroyed by
Lysimachus—a
Macedonian officer, one of the successors (
Diadochi) of Alexander the Great, later a king (306 BC) in
Thrace and
Asia Minor, during the same era when he nearly destroyed (and did depopulate by forced expulsion) the neighboring Ionian League city of
Lebedos.
Notium served as the port, and in the neighbourhood was the village of
Clarus, with its famous temple and oracle of
Apollo Clarius, where
Calchas vied with
Mopsus in divinatory science. In
Roman times, after
Lysimachus' conquest, Colophon failed to recover (unlike
Lebedos) and lost its importance; actually, the name was transferred to the site of the port village of
Notium, and the latter name disappeared between the
Peloponnesian War and the time of
Cicero (late 5th century BC to 1st century BC). Additionally, the city, as a major location on the Ionic mainland, was cited as a possible home or birthplace for
Homer. In his
True History,
Lucian lists it as a possible birthplace along with the island of
Khios and the city of
Smyrna, though Lucian's Homer claims to be from
Babylon. == Bishopric ==