Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/193

 TAX-IONIC FESTIVAL. 177 of Neileus and his companions would be found true, als<t, respect ing most of the maritime colonies of Greece, and that the vessels which took them out would be scantily provided with women. But on this point, unfortunately, we are left without information The worship of Apollo Didymaeus, at Branchidaj, near Miletus, that of Artemis, near Ephesus, and that of the Apollo Klarius, near Kolophon, seems to have existed among the native Asiatic population before the establishment of either of these three cities. To maintain these preexisting local rites was not less congenial to the feelings, than beneficial to the interests, of the Greeks : all the three establishments acquired increased celebrity under Ionic administration, and contributed in their turn to the prosperity of the towns to which they were attached. Miletus, Myus, and Priene were situated on or near the productive plain of the river Meander ; while Ephesus was, in like manner, planted near the mouth of the Kai'ster, thus immediately communicating with the productive breadth of land separating Mount Tinolus on the north from Mount Messogis on the south, through which that river runs : Kolophou is only a very few miles north of the same river. Possessing the best means of communication with the interior, these three towns seem to have thriven with greater rapidity than the rest ; and they, together with the neighboring island of Samos, con- stituted in early times the strength of the Pan-Ionic amphikty- ony. The situation of the sacred precinct of Poseidon (where this festival was celebrated), on the north side of the promontory of Mykale, near Priene, and between Ephesus and Miletus, seems to show that these towns formed the primitive centre to which the other Ionian settlements became gradually aggregated. For it was by no means a centrical site with reference to all the twelve ; so that Thales of Miletus, who at a subsequent period recommended a more intimate political union between the twelve Ionic towns, and the establishment of a common government to manage their collective affairs, indicated Teos, 1 and not PriOne, as the suitable place for it. Moreover, it seems that the Pan Ionic festival, 2 though still formally continued, had lost ita 1 Herodot. i. 170. 1 Both Diodorus (xv, 49) and Dionysius of Halikarnassus (A. R. iy, 25) VOL. III. 8* 120G.