We find both Polykratês of Samos, and Peisistratus of Athens, taking a warm interest in the sanctity of Dêlos and the celebrity of this festival.[280] But it was partly the rise of these two great Ionian despots, partly the conquests of the Persians in Asia Minor, which broke up the independence of the numerous petty Ionian cities, during the last half of the sixth century before the Christian era; hence the great festival at Dêlos gradually declined in importance. Though never wholly intermitted, it was shorn of much of its previous ornaments, and especially of that which constituted the first of all ornaments,—the crowds of joyous visitors. And Thucydidês, when he notices the attempt made by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, in the height of their naval supremacy, to revive the Delian festival, quotes the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, as a certificate of its foregone and long-forgotten splendor. We perceive that even _he_ could find no better evidence than this hymn, for Grecian transactions of a century anterior to Peisistratus,—and we may, therefore, judge how imperfectly the history of this period was known to the men who took part in the Peloponnesian war. The hymn is exceedingly precious as an historical document, because it attests to us a transitory glory and extensive association of the Ionic Greeks on both sides of the Ægean sea, which the conquests of the Lydians first, and of the Persians afterwards, overthrew,—a time when the hair of the wealthy Athenian was decorated with golden ornaments, and his tunic made of linen,[281] like that of the Milesians and Ephesians, instead of the more sober costume and woollen clothing which he subsequently copied from Sparta and Peloponnesus,—a time too when the Ionic name had not yet contracted that stain of effeminacy and cowardice, which stood imprinted upon it in the time of Herodotus and Thucydidês, and which grew partly out of the subjugation of the Asiatic Ionians by Persia, partly out of the antipathy of the Peloponnesian Dorians to Athens. The author of the Homeric Hymn, in describing the proud Ionians who thronged, in his day, to the Delian festival, could hardly have anticipated a time to come, when the name _Ionian_ would become a reproach, such as the European Greeks, to whom it really belonged, were desirous of disclaiming.[282] [280] Thucyd. iii, 104. [281] Thucyd. i, 6. διὰ τὸ ἁβροδίαιτον, etc. [282] Herodot. i, 143. Οἱ μέν νυν ἄλλοι Ἴωνες καὶ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι ἔφυγον τὸ οὔνομα, οὐ βουλόμενοι Ἴωνες κεκλῆσθαι,—an assertion quite unquestionable with reference to the times immediately preceding Herodotus, but not equally admissible in regard to the earlier times. Compare Thucyd. i, 124 (with the Scholium), and also v, 9; viii, 25.