If, however, the brilliant culture of the Asiatic Greeks about the opening of the sixth century admits no shadow of doubt, singularly few material things, which their arts produced, have been recovered for us to see to-day. Miletus has been excavated by Germans to a very considerable extent, without yielding anything really worthy of its great period, or, indeed, much that can be referred to that period at all, except sherds of a fine painted ware. It looks as if the city at the mouth of the greatest and largest valley, which penetrates Asia Minor from the west coast, was too important in subsequent ages and suffered chastisements too drastic and reconstructions too thorough for remains of its earlier greatness to survive except in holes and corners. Ephesus has given us more archaic treasures, from the deposits bedded down under the later reconstructions of its great shrine of Artemis; but here again the site of the city itself, though long explored by Austrians, has not added to the store. The ruins of the great Roman buildings which overlie its earlier strata have proved, perhaps, too serious an impediment to the excavators and too seductive a prize. Branchidae, with its temple of Apollo and Sacred Way, has preserved for us a little archaic statuary, as have also Samos and Chios. We have archaic gold work and painted vases from Rhodes, painted sarcophagi from Clazomenae, and painted pottery made there and at other places in Asia Minor, although found mostly abroad. But all this amounts to a very poor representation of the Asiatic Greek civilization of 600 B.C. Fortunately the soil still holds far more than has been got out of it. With those two exceptions, Miletus and Ephesus, the sites of the elder Hellenic cities on or near the Anatolian coast still await excavators who will go to the bottom of all things and dig systematically over a large area; while some sites await any excavation whatsoever, except such as is practised by plundering peasants.