After Leucæ follows Phocæa,[94] situated on a bay. I have mentioned this place in the description of Massalia.[95] Then follow the confines of the Ionians and the Æolians. I have already spoken of these.[96]
In the interior of the Ionian maritime territory there remain to be described the places about the road leading from Ephesus, as far as Antioch[97] and the Mæander.
This tract is occupied by a mixed population of Lydians, Carians, and Greeks.
39. The first place after Ephesus is Magnesia, an Æolian city, and called Magnesia on the Mæander, for it is situated near it; but it is still nearer the Lethæus, which discharges itself into the Mæander. It has its source in Pactyes, a mountain in the Ephesian district. There is another Lethæus in Gortyne, a third near Tricca, where Asclepius is said to have been born, and the fourth among the Hesperitæ Libyans.[98]
Magnesia lies in a plain, near a mountain called Thorax,[99] on which it is said Daphitas the grammarian was crucified, for reviling the kings in a distich—
“O slaves, with backs purpled with stripes, filings of the gold of Lysimachus, you are the kings of Lydia and Phrygia.”
An oracle is said to have warned Daphitas to beware of the Thorax.[100]
40. The Magnesians appear to be the descendants of Delphians who inhabited the Didymæan mountains in Thessaly, and of whom Hesiod says,
“or, as the chaste virgin, who inhabits the sacred Didymæan hills in the plain of Dotium, opposite Amyrus, abounding with vines, and bathes her feet in the lake Bœbias—”
At Magnesia also was the temple of Dindymene, the mother of the gods. Her priestess, according to some writers, was the daughter, according to others, the wife, of Themistocles. At present there is no temple, because the city has been transferred to another place. In the present city is the temple of Artemis Leucophryene, which in the size of the nave and in the number of sacred offerings is inferior to the temple at Ephesus; but, in the fine proportion and the skill exhibited in the structure of the enclosure, it greatly surpasses the Ephesian temple; in size it is superior to all the temples in Asia, except that at Ephesus and that at Didymi.