The worship of Apollo Didymæus, at Branchidæ, near Milêtus,—that of Artemis, near Ephesus,—and that of the Apollo Klarius, near Kolophôn,—seems to have existed among the native Asiatic population before the establishment of either of these three cities. To maintain these preëxisting 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. Milêtus, Myûs, and Priênê were situated on or near the productive plain of the river Mæander; while Ephesus was, in like manner, planted near the mouth of the Kaïster, thus immediately communicating with the productive breadth of land separating Mount Tmôlus on the north from Mount Messôgis on the south, through which that river runs: Kolophôn 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, constituted in early times the strength of the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony. The situation of the sacred precinct of Poseidôn (where this festival was celebrated), on the north side of the promontory of Mykalê, near Priênê, and between Ephesus and Milêtus, 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 Thalês of Milêtus,—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 Teôs,[295] and not Priênê, as the suitable place for it. Moreover, it seems that the Pan-Ionic festival,[296] though still formally continued, had lost its importance before the time of Thucydidês, and had become practically superseded by the more splendid festival of the Ephesia, near Ephesus, where the cities of Ionia found a more attractive place of meeting. [295] Herodot. i, 170. [296] Both Diodorus (xv, 49) and Dionysius of Halikarnassus (A. R. iv, 25) speak as if the convocation or festival had been formally transferred to Ephesus, in consequence of the insecurity of the meetings near Mykalê: Strabo on the contrary speaks of the Pan-Ionia as if they still in his time celebrated in the original spot (xiv, pp. 636-638), under the care of the Priêneans. The formal transfer is not probable: Thucydidês (iii, 104) proves that in his time the festival of Ephesia was practically the Pan-Ionic rendezvous, though Herodotus does not seem to have conceived it as such. See Guhl, Ephesiaca, part iii, p. 117; and K. F. Hermann, Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer der Griechen, c. 66, p. 343.