The remarkable commercial enterprise, which will be seen to characterize Milêtus, Samos, and Phokæa, belongs but little to anything connected with the Ionic temperament. [293] Thucyd. vi, 17, about the Sicilian Greeks—ὄχλοις τε γὰρ ξυμμικτοῖς πολυανδροῦσιν αἱ πόλεις, καὶ ῥᾳδίας ἔχουσι τῶν πολιτειῶν τὰς μεταβολὰς καὶ ἐπιδοχάς. All the Ionic towns, except Klazomenæ and Phokæa, are represented to have been founded on some preëxisting settlements of Karians, Lelegians, Kretans, Lydians, or Pelasgians.[294] In some cases these previous inhabitants were overcome, slain, or expelled; in others they were accepted as fellow-residents, and the Grecian cities thus established acquired a considerable tinge of Asiatic customs and feelings. What is related by Herodotus respecting the first establishment of Neileus and his emigrants at Milêtus is in this point of view remarkable. They took out with them no women from Athens (the historian says), but found wives in the Karian women of the place, whose husbands and fathers they overcame and put to death; and the women, thus violently seized, manifested their repugnance by taking a solemn oath among themselves that they would never eat with their new husbands, nor ever call them by their personal names. This same pledge they imposed upon their daughters; but how long the practice lasted, we are not informed: it rather seems from the language of the historian that traces of it were visible even in his day in the family customs of the Milesians. The population of this greatest of the Ionic towns must thus have been half of Karian breed. It is to be presumed that what is true of Neileus and his companions would be found true, also, respecting 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. [294] See Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, b. iv, c. 10, p. 93.