(they took place every four years). In the first half of the 1st century BC the Didymeia were banned because Miletus had supported Mithridates, in his war against the Romans. Furthermore, the sanctuary of Apollo was looted by pirates in 67 BC. After Pompey had reorganized the East of the Roman Empire, the Didymeia were permitted again in 63 BC. Some years later Julius Caesar expanded the area under asylum in Didyma. Apparently the Roman emperor Caligula tried to complete the huge temple of Apollo. Emperor Trajan renewed the Sacred Way between Miletus and Didyma as inscriptions prove in 101 AD. His successor Hadrian visited Miletus and Didyma in 129 AD and acted as Prophet - the highest office in the sanctuary. Under Commodus the Didymeia were held as the Commodeia for the cult of the emperor. In Hellenistic and Roman times the sanctuary of Apollo flourished again. Numerous oracles of Apollo were imparted, some of them are extant in Roman inscriptions. These included inquiries and responses, and literary testimony records Didyma's role as an oracle, with the "grim epilogue" of Apollo's supposed sanction of Diocletian's persecution of Christians, until the closing of the temples under Theodosius I. This was the end of the oracle. In Late Antiquity Didyma had been the seat of a bishop. Under Justinian I it was honoured with the title Iustinianopolis. In Byzantine times it changed the name to Hieronda deriving from the Greek name for sanctuary (hieron). This name was used for the village above the temple ruin until the early 20th century (Jeronda) and today the Turks continue to call it Yoran. About 1300 AD the Turks conquered this area of Ionia. Afterwards an earthquake in 1493 destroyed the temple of Apollo and the village was abandoned. About 300 years later the village was resettled by Greeks who used the broken ancient buildings as quarries. Modern investigations When Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli visited the spot in 1446, it seems that the temple was still standing in great part, although the cella had been converted into a fortress by the Byzantines, but when the next European visitor, the Englishmen Jeremy Salter and Dr Pickering, arrived in 1673, it had collapsed. The Society of Dilettanti sent two expeditions to explore the ruins, the first in 1764 under Richard Chandler, the second in 1812 under William Gell. The French "Rothschild Expedition" of 1873 sent a certain amount