Sanctuary of Artemis Astias, Iasos
This sanctuary was especially venerated and celebrated in antiquity on account of a strange phenomenon said to occur there: as in the case of the Artemis Kyndias at Bargylia, on the Artemis Astias of Iasos no drop of rain or flake of snow ever fell (Polybius, XVI, 12, 4). According to Pliny the Elder (36.12), the archaic statue of Artemis was the work of the famous sculptors Boupalos and Athenis, while Polybius indicates that the image of the divinity was not placed inside a temple, but in the open. What we see today is the result of works carried out in the area at various periods, beginning in late classical times.