of Teos, and many more. The fact is significant, because studies and
literary activities like theirs could hardly have been pursued except in
highly civilized, free and leisured societies where life and wealth were
secure.

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