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 predominance in the Aegean to the interval between 900 and 700 B.C. All the members of the Ionian family—in Greece Proper, in the islands, in the Asiatic settlements—were closely united by the sentiment of a common ancestry and a common worship, which formed a circle within the circle of Hellenic kinship. Apollo Patroüs was the god of all who sprang from the loins of Ion: the true "sons of Javan" felt a peculiar pride in that Ionian name which, for Eastern nations, had become the universal appellative of the Hellenes. Athens was not as yet pre-eminent: Megara on one side of it, Chalcis and Eretria on the other, were at least its equals; and it may be noted that the Homeric hymn bears a slight but sure mark of its own age in the passage which speaks of "Euboea famed for ships ."

Delos was the centre of a great Pan-Ionic gathering, to which Ionians resorted from all the islands and the coasts. It was held in the month Thargelion, on the seventh day of which (about May 20) the birth of Apollo was celebrated and, like the later Ephesia, it was probably annual,—as the sacred embassies and sacrifices certainly were from a very early time. The Homeric rhapsode of Chios has described it: "Many temples are thine, and wooded groves; all heights are dear to thee, and jutting capes of lofty hills, and rivers that flow to the sea; but it is in Delos that thy heart takes most joy. There, in thy