See Architecture, No. 45.

IONIC Dialect, in Grammar, a manner of speaking peculiar to the people of Ionia.

IONIC SECT was the first of the ancient sects of philosophers; the others were the Italic and Eleatic. The founder of this sect was Thales, who being a native of Miletus in Ionia, occasioned his followers to assume the appellation of Ionic: Thales was succeeded by Anaximander, and he by Anaximenes, both of Miletus: Anaxagoras Clazomeniæ succeeded them, and removed his school from Asia to Athens, where Socrates was his scholar. It was the distinguishing tenet of this sect, that water was the principle of all natural things.