Didyma - Sacred Precinct in Miletus

Definition: Didyma, a sacred precinct of Miletus rather than a city, had been a cult center for the Carians before it housed an oracle of Apollo with hereditary priests known as the Branchidae whom the famous Croesus once consulted.<P> In 479, Xerxes retaliated against the Greeks by destroying the temple in Didyma. Surrendering the treasury, the Branchidae fled to Sogdiana to escape the wrath of their fellow Ionians where, in 327, they suffered at the hand of Alexander the Great.