to flow and the archaic oracle was silenced. Although the sanctuaries of Delphi and Ephesus were swiftly rebuilt, Didyma remained a ruin until the time Alexander the Great conquered Miletus and freed it from the Persians in 334 BC. In between a complete break had been rent in the oracles' personnel and tradition, the Branchidae priests marched off to Persian sovereign territory. Callisthenes, a court historian of Alexander, reported that the spring began once more to flow as Alexander passed through Egypt in 331 BC. After the liberation from the Persians the Milesians began to build a new temple for Apollo, which was the largest in the Hellenic world after the temple of Hera on the Isle of Samos and the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Vitruvius recorded a tradition that the architects were Paeonius of Ephesus, whom Vitruvius credited with the rebuilding of the Temple of Artemis there, and Daphnis of Miletus. The dipteral temple of Apollo was surrounded by a double file of Ionic columns. From the pronaos lead two tunnels to the inner court. This was the location of the oracle spring, the sacred laurel tree and the naiskos - which was itself a small temple. It contained in its own small cella the bronze cult image of Apollo, brought back by Seleucus I Nicator from Persia about 300 BC. In the Hellenistic period, beside Alexander, the kings Seleucus I and Seleucus II received oracles. So in the 3rd century BC the sanctuary of Apollo stood under the influence of the Seleucids, offering very rich donations to Apollo. Didyma suffered a serious setback in 277/76 BC, as Galatians looted it, coming from the Balkans to Asia Minor. Pliny reported the worship of Apollo Didymiae, Apollo of Didymus, in Central Asia, transported to Sogdiana by a general of Seleucus I and Antiochus I whose inscribed altars there were still to be seen by Pliny's correspondents. Corroborating inscriptions on amphoras were found by I. R. Pichikyan at Dilbergin. Afterwards the kings of Bithynia made donations to the Didymaion in the 2nd century BC and the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt in the first half of 1st century BC. The annual festival held in Didyma under the auspices of Miletus were called the Didymeia. They are first mentioned at the beginning 3rd century BC. A hundred years later they were made a Panhellenic (open to all Greeks) and a penteteric festival