Book 14
1.40
The Magnetans are thought to be descendants of Delphians who settled in the Didyman hills, in Thessaly, concerning whom Hesiod says: Or as the unwedded virgin who, dwelling on the holy Didyman hills, in the Dotian Plain, in front of Amyrus, bathed her foot in Lake Boebeïs.Hes. Fr. 122(Rzach)Also quoted in 9. 5. 22. Here was also the temple of Dindymene, Mother of the gods. According to tradition, the wife of Themistocles, some say his daughter, served as a priestess there. But the temple is not now in existence, because the city has been transferred to another site. In the present city is the temple of Artemis Leucophryene, which in the size of its shrine and in the number of its votive offerings is inferior to the temple at Ephesus, but in the harmony and skill shown in the structure of the sacred enclosure is far superior to it. And in size it surpasses all the sacred enclosures in Asia except two, that at Ephesus and that at Didymi. In ancient times, also, it came to pass that the Magnetans were utterly destroyed by the Treres, a Cimmerian tribe, although they had for a long time been a prosperous people, but the Milesians took possession of the place in the following year. Now Callinus mentions the Magnetans as still being a prosperous people and as being successful in their war against the Ephesians, but Archilochus is obviously already aware of the misfortune that befell them: to bewail the woes of the Thasians, not those of the Magnetans;Archil. Fr. 20 (Bergk) whence one may judge that he was more recent than Callinus. And Callinus recalls another, and earlier, invasion of the Cimmerians when he says: And now the army of the Cimmerians, mighty in deeds, advanceth,Callinus Fr. 3 (Bergk)in which he plainly indicates the capture of Sardeis.
