Marathesium

Marathesium or Marathesion () was a polis of ancient Ionia on the coast south of Ephesus, which was a member of the Ionian League. Marathesium was too small to be a member of the League or even to stand independently on its own. It has been classified recently as a dependent polis of one of the members of the League, first of Melia, then of Miletus after Melia had been defeated in the Meliac War, then of Samos, by lawsuit based on its occupation, and finally of Ephesus by a treaty involving the swap of cities.

Marathesium had something Ephesus did not, a harbor. The date of foundation of Ephesus is back in the bronze age under the Hittite state of Arzawa. During that time it came into contact with the Achaean Greeks. At some point after the fall of Arzawa it was invested by the Ionians. No doubt Ionian Ephesus was founded on the coast of the Aegean, like all the other Ionian cities. Since then the Küçük Menderes River, at the mouth of which it was placed, prograded to such an extent in parallel to the progradation of the Büyük Menderes River that Ephesus was left inland, like Priene and Myus on the other side of Mycale. Ionian ascendancy then passed to the Ionian cites still on the ocean: Miletus and Samos.