The handle for reorganization which the priestly towns offered to the new government was often the non-ecclesiastical part of the population. That the temple was regularly the centre of local trade and the scene of a recurrent bazaar tempted to its proximity money-changers and the like. When the Greek immigration began this element was naturally strengthened. It was, therefore, possible for the Seleucids to give it an urban organization--a general assembly, a council, and magistrates; and in this way to create a new city-state. According to invariable Greek practice, however, such a city controlled--with certain limitations--its own shrines. The great temples of Apollo at Delphi and Delos, for example, were governed by the citizens of those towns. Hence the natural policy for the Seleucids, and the one which they in fact followed wherever practicable, was to subordinate the high priests and clergy to the adjacent urban authorities, thus solving the ecclesiastical question in a way convenient for themselves and agreeable to European feeling. Where this did not prove practicable, they often despoiled the temple of its lands for the benefit of their followers. Thus the village of Bætocæce was taken from the local temple of Zeus and given to a certain Demetrius, and the sacred land of Zeus of Æzani was divided into lots, which were assigned to cleruchs, subjected to a tax, and attached to the financial jurisdiction of an adjoining city.[111] It is simply another aspect of the same general policy when king after king sought to lay "impious" hands upon the treasures stored up in the temples of Bel, Anaitis, Atargatis, and Jehovah.