Ephesus

E´PHESUS(Ἔφεσος: Eth. Ἐφέσιος, Ἐφεσίτης, Ἐφεσεύς), a city in Lydia, one of the twelve Ionian cities (Hdt. 1.142), on the south side of the Caystrus, and near its mouth. The port was called Panormus. The country around Ephesus was an alluvial plain, as Herodotus observes (2.10). The name of Ephesus does not occur in the Homeric poems, and there is no proof, says Strabo, that it was so old as the Trojan War (p. 620).. According to a myth (Steph. B. s. v. Ἔφεσος), the place was originally called Smyrna, from Smyrna the Amazon: it was also called Samorna, and Trecheia, and Ortygia, and Ptelea. The name Ephesus was said to be from one of the Amazons. The name Ptelea appears in an inscription of the Roman period which was copied by Chishull at Ephesus. Pliny (Plin. Nat. 5.29) has also preserved this legend of the Amazonian origin of Ephesus, and a name Alope, which the place had at the time of the Trojan War; a story found in Hyginus also. Pliny also. mentions the name Morges. The legend of the Amazons is connected with the goddess Artemis, the deity of Ephesus. Pausanias (Paus. 7.2.6) has a legend about the temple of Ephesus being founded by Ephesus, the son of the river Caystrus, and Cresus an autochthon.
Strabo, who had been at Ephesus, gives a pretty good description of it (p. 639). As a man sailed northward through the channel that separates Samos from Mycale, he came to the sea-coast of the Ephesia, part of which belongs to the Samii. North of the Panionium. was Neapolis, which once belonged to Ephesus, but in Strabo's time to the Samii, who had received it in exchange for Marathesium. Next was Pygela, a small place with a temple of Artemis Munychia, a settlement of Agamemnon,. according to a legend; and next the port called Panormus, which contained a temple of Artemis Ephesia; and then the city. On this same coast, a little above the sea, there was also Ortygia, a fine grove of various kinds of trees, and particularly cypress. The stream Cenchrius flowed through it. The stream and the place were connected with a legend of Lato and the birth of Apollo and Artemis. Ortygia was the nurse who assisted Lato in her labour. Above the grove was a mountain Solmissus, where the Curetes placed themselves, and with the clashing of their arms prevented the jealous Hera, who was on the watch, from hearing the cries of Lato. There were several temples in this place, old and new: in the old temples there were ancient wooden statues; but in the later temples others (σκολιὰ ἔργα This word ακολιὰhas never been explained. Tyrrwhitt altered it to Σκόπα.See Groskurd's note on the passage ( Trans. Strab. vol. 3. p. 14).There, was Lato holding a staff, and Ortygia standing by her with a child on each arm. The Cares and Leleges were the settlers of Ephesus, according to one story (Strabo), and these two peoples or two names are often mentioned together. But Pherecydes (Strab. p. 632) says that the Paralia of Ionia was originally occupied by Carians from Miletus to the parts about Mycale and Ephesus, and the remainder as far as Phocaea by Leleges. The natives. were driven out of Ephesus by Androclus and his Ionians, who settled about the Athenaeum and the Hypelaeus, and they also occupied a part of the higher country (τῆς Παρωρείας) about the Coressus. Pausanias preserves a tradition that Androclus drove out of the country the Leleges, whom he takes to be a branch of the Carians, and the Lydians who occupied the upper city; but those who dwelt about the temple were not molested, and. they came to terms with the Ionians. This tradition shows that the old temple was not in the city. The tomb of Androclus was still shown in the time of Pausanias, on the road from the temple past the Olympieium, and to the Pylae Magnetides; the figure on the tomb was an armed man (7.2.. § 6, &c.). This place on the hill was the site of the city until Croesus' time, as Strabo says. Croesus warred against the lonians of Ephesus (Herod. i, 26), and besieged their city, at which time during the siege (so says the text) the Ephesii dedicated their city to Artemis by fastening the city to the temple by a rope. It was seven stadia between the old city, the city that was then besieged, and the temple. This old city was the city on the Paroreia. After the time of Croesus the people came down into the plain, and lived about the presenttemple (Strabo) to the time of Alexander.
King Lysimachus built the walls of the city that existed in Strabo's time; and as the people were not willing to remove to the new city, he waited for a violent rain, which he assisted by stopping up the channels that carried off the water, and so drowned the city, and made the people glad to leave it. Lysimachus called his new city Arsinoë after his wife, but the name did not last long. The story of the destruction of the old city, which was on very low ground, is told by Stephanus (s. v. Ἔφεσος) somewhat differently from Strabo. He attributes the destruction to a violent storm of rain, which swelled the river. The town was situated too low; and, as the Caystrus is subject to sudden risings, it was damaged or destroyed, as modern towns sometimes have been which were planted too near a river. Thousands were drowned, and valuable property was lost. Stephanus quotes a small poem of Duris of Elaea made on the occasion, which attributes that calamity to the rain and the sudden rising of the river. Nothing is known of Duris, and we must suppose that he lived about the time of the destruction of Ephesus, or about B.C. 322. (Comp. Eustath. ad Dionys. 5.827, who quotes the first two lines of the epigramma of Duris.) Pausanias (Paus. 1.9.7) states that Lysimachus removed to his new Ephesus the people of Colophon and Lebedus, from which time the ruin of these two towns may be dated. [COLOPHON]
The history of Ephesus, though it was one of the chief of the Ionian towns, is scanty. As it was founded by Androclus the son of Codrus, the kingly residence (βασίλειον, whatever the word means) of the lonians was fixed there, as they say (Strab. p. 633), and even to now those of the family are named kings (βασιλεῖς) and have certain honours, the first seat in the games, and purple as a sign of royalty, a staff instead of a sceptre, and the possession or direction of the rites of Eleusinian Demeter(comp. Hdt. 1.147). Ephesus was it seems from an early period a kind of sacred city, for Thucydides (Thuc. 3.104), when he is speaking of the ancient religious festival at Delos to which the Ionians and the surrounding islanders used to go with their wives and children, adds, as now the Iones to the Ephesia.Strabo (p. 633) has also preserved the tradition of Ephesus having been called Smyrna, and he has a very confused story about the Smyrnaei leaving the Ephesii to found Smyrna Proper. [SMYRNA] He quotes Callinus as evidence of the people of Ephesus having been once named Smyrnaei, and Hipponax to prove that a spot in Ephesus was named Smyrna. This spot lay between Trecheia and the Acte of Lepra; and this Lepra was the hill Prion which was above the Ephesus of Strabo's time, and contained part of the wall. He concludes that the Smyrna of old Ephesus was near the gymnasium of the later town of Ephesus, between Trecheia and Lepra. The old Athenaeum was without the limits of the later city.
The Cimmerians in an invasion of western Asia took Sardis except the acropolis (Hdt. 1.15), in the reign of the Lydian king Ardys; and it seems that they got into the valley of the Caystrus and threatened Ephesus. (Callinus, Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci, p. 303.) Callinus also speaks of a war between the Magnetes or people of Magnesia and Ephesus his native city (Strab. p. 647), which war of course was before that inroad of the Cimmerii by which Magnesia was destroyed: for there was a tradition of mere than one Cimmerian invasion. Ephesus fell successively under the dominion of the Lydian and Persian kings. In B.C. 499, when the Athenians and Eretrians with the Ionians went against Sardis, they sailed to Ephesus and left their ships at Coressus. Some Ephesii were their guides up the valley of the Caystrus and over the range of Tmolus. After the lonians had fired Sardis they retreated; but the Persians overtook them at Ephesus and defeated the confederates there. (Herod 5.102.) This is all that Herodotus says about Ephesus on this occasion. After the naval battle before Miletus, in which the Ionian confederates were defeated, some of the Chii, who had escaped to Mycale, made their way by night into the Ephesia, where the women were celebrating the Thesmophoria, and the Ephesii, who knew nothing of what had happened to the Chii, fell upon them supposing they were robbers, and killed them or made a beginning at least. (Hdt. 6.16). The Ephesii had no ships in the fight before Miletus; and we must conclude that they took no part in the revolt. When Xerxes burnt the temple at Branchidae and the other temples(Strab. p. 634), the temple of Ephesus was spared. Near the close of the Peloponnesian War, Thrasyllus, an Athenian commander, who was on a marauding expedition, landed at Ephesus, on which the Persian Tissaphernes summoned all the country to Ephesus to the aid of Artemis. The Athenians were defeated and made off. (Xen Hell. 1.2.6.) Lysander, the Spartan commander, entered the port of Ephesus (B.C. 407) with a fleet, his object being to have an interview with Cyrus at Sardis. While he was repairing and fitting up his ships at Ephesus, Antiochus, the Athenian, who was stationed at Notium as commander under Alcibiades, gave Lysander the opportunity of fighting a seafight, in which the Athenians were defeated. (Xen. Hell. 1.5. 1, &c.) After the battle of Aegos Potami the Ephesians dedicated in the temple of Artemis a statue of Lysander, and of other Spartans who were unknown to fame; but after the decline of the Spartan power and the victory of Conon at Cnidus, they set up statues of Conon and Timotheus in their temple, as the Samii also did in their Heraeum. (Paus. 6.3.15.)
There is no notice of Ephesus taking any active part in war against the barbarians from the time of Croesus, who attacked this town first of all the Ionian towns, and probably with the view of getting a place on the sea. For Ephesus was the most convenient port for Sardis, being three days'journey distant (Xen. Hell. 3.2. 11), or 540 stadia (Hdt. 5.54). It was the usual landing-place for those who went to Sardis, as we see in many instances. (Xen. Anab. 2.2. 6）
The Ionian settlers at Ephesus, according to tradition, found the worship of Artemis there, or of some deity to whom they gave the name of Artemis. (Callim. in Dian.238.) A temple of Artemis existed in the time of Croesus, who dedicated in the temple the golden cows and the greater part of the pillars,as Herodotus has it (1.92). Herodotus mentions the temple at Ephesus with that of Hera at Samos as among the great works of the Greeks (2.146), but the Heraeum was the larger. The original architect is named Chersiphron by Strabo, and another architect enlarged it. The architect of the first temple that the lonians built was a contemporary of Theodorus and Rhoecus, who built the Heraeum at Samos. When Xenophon settled at Scillus, he built a temple to Artemis like the great one at Ephesus; and he placed in it a statue of cypress like that of Ephesus, except that the Ephesian Artemis was of gold. There was a stream Selinus near the temple at Ephesus, and there was a stream so called at Scillus, or Xenophon gave it the name. Xenophon was at Ephesus before he joined Agesilaus on his march from Asia to Boeotia, and he deposited there the share that had been entrusted to him of the tenth that had been appropriated to Apollo and Artemis of the produce of the slaves which the Ten Thousand sold at Cerasus on their retreat. This fact shows that the temple at Ephesus was one of the great holy places to the Ionic Hellenes. (Xen. Anab. 5.3. 4, &c.) The worship of the goddess was carried by the Phocaeans to Massalia ( Marseille), and thence to the Massaliot settlements. (Strab. pp. 159,160, 179, 180, 184.) Dianium or Artemisium, on the coast of Spain, was so called from having a temple of the Ephesian Artemis.
This enlarged temple of Artemis was burnt down by Herostratus, it is said on the night on which Alexander was born. The, temple was rebuilt again, and probably on the same site. The name of the architect is corrupted in the text of Strabo, but it is supposed that the true reading is Dinocrates. Alexander, when he entered Asia on his Persian expedition, offered to pay all that had been expended on the new temple and all that it would still cost, if he might be allowed to place the inscription on it; by which, as the answer of the Ephesii shows, who decined his proposal, was meant his placing his name on the temple as the dedicator of it to the goddess. The Ephesii undertook the building of their own temple, to which the women contributed their ornaments, and the people gave their property, and something was raised by the sale of the old pillars. But it was 220 years before the temple was finished.
The temple was built on low marshy ground to save it from earthquakes, as Pliny says (36.14), but Leake suggests another reason. The tall Ionic column was more appropriate for a building in a plain, and the shorter Doric column looked better on a height. Leake observes that all the greatest and most costly of the temples of Asia, except one, are built on low and marshy spots.The Ephesii seem always to have stuck to the old site of the temple, and it is probable that they would have placed the new one there, even if their columns had been Doric instead of Ionic.
The foundations of the new temple were laid on well-rammed charcoal and wool. The length of the building was 425 feet, and the width 220. The columns were 127, each made by a king,as Pliny says. The columns were 60 feet high, ad 36 were carved, and one of them by Scopas. The epistylia or stones that rested over the intercolumniations, or on the part of the columns between the capitals, and the frieze, were of immense size. It would take a book, says Pliny, to describe all the temple; and Democritus of Ephesus wrote one upon it (Athen. 12. p. 525). Leake (Asia Minor, p. 346) supposes that the temple had a double row of 21 columns on each side, and a triple row of 10 columns at the two ends. This will make 120 columns, for 24 columns have been counted twice. If we add 4 columns in antis at each end of the building, this will make the whole number 128, for the number 127 cannot be right. Leake has made his plan of the temple in English feet, on the same scale as the other plans of temples (p. 351); for he observes that we. cannot tell whether Pliny used the Greek or the Roman foot. The English foot is somewhat longer than the Roman, and less than the Greek. For the purpose of comparison it is immaterial what foot is used. This was the largest of the Greek temples. The area of the Parthenon at Athens was not one-fourth of that of the temple of Ephesus; and the Heraeum of Samos, the great temple at Agrigentum and the Olympieium at Athens were all less than the temple of Ephesus. The area of the Olympieium was only about two-thirds of that of the Ephesian temple.
After the temple, that is, the construction of the building, was finished, says Strabo, the Ephesians provided the abundant other ornaments by the freewill offering of the artists,that is, the native artists of Ephesus. This is the meaning that Groskurd gives to the obscure passage of Strabo (τ ἐκτιμήσει τῶν δημιουργῶν): and it is at least a probable meaning ( Transl. Strab. vol. 3. p. 17). But the altar was almost entirely filled with the work of Praxiteles. Strabo was also shown some of the work of Thraso, a Penelope and the aged Eurycleia. The temple contained one of the great pictures of Apelles, the Alexander Ceraunophoros (Plin. Nat. 35.10; Cic. c. Verr. 2.4100.60). The priests were eunuchs, called Megalobuzi. (Comp. Xen. Anab. 5.3, § 8.) They were highly honoured, and the Ephesii procured from foreign places such as were worthy of the office. Virgins were also associated with them in the superintendence of the temple. It was of old an asylum, and the limits of the asylum were often varied. Alexander extended them to a stadium, and Mithridates the Great somewhat further, as far as an arrow went that he shot from the angle of the tiling of the roof (ἀπό τῆς γωνίας τοῦ κεράμου). M. Antonius extended the limits to twice the distance, and thus comprised within them part of the city; from which we learn that the temple was still out of the city, and less than 1200 Greek feet from it. But this extension of the limits was found to. be very mischievous, and the ordinance of Antonius was abolished by Augustus. The extension of the limits by Antonius was exactly adapted to make, one part of the city of Ephesus the rogues' quarter.
The growth of Ephesus, as a commercial city, seems to have been after the time of Alexander. It was included within the dominions of Lysimachus, whose reign lasted to B.C. 281. It afterwards was included in the dominions of the kings of Pergamum. The city,says Strabo, has both ship-houses, and a harbour; but the architects contracted the mouth of the harbour at the command of king Attalus, named Philadelphus. The king supposing that the entrance would become deep enough for large merchant vessels, and also the harbour, which had up to that time been made shallow by the alluvium of the Caystrus, if a mole were placed in front of the entrance, which was very wide. ordered it to be constructed. But it turned out just the opposite to what he expected; for the alluvium being thus kept in made all the harbour shallower as far as the entrance; but before this time, the floods and the reflux of the sea took off the alluvium and carried it out to sea.Strabo adds, that in his time, the time of Augustus, the city in all other respects, owing to the favourable situation, is increasing daily, for it is the greatest place of trade of all the cities of Asia west of the Taurus.The neighbourhood of Ephesus also produced good wine.
After the mouth of the Caystrus, says Strabo, is a lake formed by the sea, named Selinusia (Groskurd, Transl. Strab. vol. 3. p. 19, note, gives his reasons for preferring the reading Selenusia); and close to it another lake, which communicates with the Selinusia, both of which bring in a great revenue. The kings (those of Pergamum, probably) took them away from the goddess, though they belonged to her. The Romans gave them back to the goddess; but again the publicani by force seized on the revenue that was got from them; but Artemidorus, as he says himself, being sent to Rome, recovered the lakes for the goddess; and the city of Ephesus set up his golden (gilded) statue in—the temple. Pliny (Plin. Nat. 5.29) seems to say that there were two rivers Selenuntes at Ephesus, and that the temple of Diana lay between them. Bet these rivers have nothing to do with the lakes, which were on the north side of the Caystrus, as the French editor of Chandler correctly observes; and Pliny has probably confounded the river and the lakes. The mountain Gallesus ( Aleman) separated the territory of Ephesus, north of the Caystrus, from that of Colophon. When Hannibal fled to Asia, he met king Antiochus near Ephesus (Appian, App. Syr. 100.4); and when the Roman commissioners went to Asia to see Antiochus, they had a good deal of talk with Hannibal while they were waiting for the king, who was in Pisidia. Antiochus, during his war with the Romans, wintered at Ephesus, at which time he had the design of adding to his empire all the cities of Asia. (Liv. 33.38). Ephesus was then the king's head-quarters. The king's fleet fought a battle with the fleet of the Romans and Eumenes at the port Corycus, which is above Cyssus(Liv..36.43); and Polyxenidas, the admiral of Antiochus, being defeated, fled back to the port of Ephesus (B.C. 189). [CASYSTES] After the great defeat of Antiochus at Magnesia, near Sipylus, by L. Cornelius Scipio, Polyxenidas left Ephesus, and the Romans occupied it. The Roman consul divided his army into three parts, and wintered at Magnesia on the Maeander, Tralles, and Ephesus. (Liv. 37.45). On the settlement of Asia after the war, the Romans rewarded their ally Eumenes, king of Pergamum, with Ephesus, in addition to other towns and countries, When the last Attalus of Pergamum died (B.C. 133) and left his states to the Romans, Aristonicus, the son of an Ephesian woman by king Eumenes, as the mother said, attempted to seize the kingdom of Pergamum. The Ephesii resisted him, and defeated him in a naval fight off Cyme. (Strab. p. 646). The Romans now formed their province of Asia (B.C. 129), of which Ephesus was the chief place, and the usual residence of the Roman governor. One of the Conventus Juridici was also named from Ephesus, which became the chief town for the administration of justice, and of a district which comprised the Caesarienses, Metropolitae, Cilbiani inferiores et superiores, Mysomacedones, Mastaurenses, Briullitae, Hypaepeni, Dioshieritae.(Pliny, H.N. 5.29).
When Mithridates entered Ionia, the Ephesii and other towns gladly received him, and the Ephesii threw down the statues of the Romans. (Appian, Mithrid. 100.21). In the general massacre of the Romans, which Mithridates directed, the Ephesii did not respect their own asylum, but they dragged out those who had taken refuge there and put them to death. Mithridates, on his visit to western Asia, married Monime, the daughter of Philopoemen of Stratonicea in Caria, and he made Philopoemen his bailiff (ἐπίσκοποςof his town of Ephesus. But the Ephesii, who were never distinguished for keeping on one side, shortly after murdered Zenobius, a general of Mithridates, the same who carried the Chians off. [CHIOS] L. Cornelius Sulla, after his victories over Mithridates, punished the Ephesii for their treachery. The Roman summoned the chief men of the Asiatic cities to Ephesus, and from his tribunal addressed them in a speech, in which, after rating them well, he imposed a heavy contribution on them, and gave notice that he would treat as enemies all who did not obey his orders. This was the end of the political history of Ephesus.
Ephesus was now the usual place at which the Romans landed when they came to Asia. When Cicero (B.C. 51) was going to his province of Cilicia, he says that the Ephesii received him as if he had come to be their governor ( ad Att. 5.13). P. Metellus Scipio, who was at Ephesus shortly before the battle of Pharsalia, was going to take the money that had been deposited from ancient times in the temple at Ephesus, when he was summoned by Cn. Pompeius to join him in Epirus. After the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, M. Antonius paid a visit to Ephesus, and offered splendid sacrifices to the goddess. He pardoned the partisans of Brutus and Cassius, who had taken refuge in the temple, except two; and it may have been on this occasion that he issued that order in favour of the rogues of Ephesus which Augustus repealed. Antonius summoned the people of Asia, who were at Ephesus represented by their commissioners, and, after recapitulating the kindness that they had experienced from the Romans, and the aid that they had given to Brutus and;Cassius, he told them that he wanted money; and that as they had given his enemies ten years' taxes in two years, they must give him ten years' taxes in one; and that they should be thankful for being let off more easily than they deserved. The Greeks made a lamentable appeal to his mercy, urging that they had given Brutus and Cassius money under compulsion; that they had even given up their plate and ornaments, which had been coined into money before their eyes. Antonius at last graciously signified that he would be content with nine years' taxes, to be paid in two years. (Appian, App. BC 5.4, &c.) It was during this visit that Antonius, according to Dio Cassius (Dio Cass. 48.24), took the brothers of Cleopatra from their sanctuary in the temple of Diana at Ephesus, and put them to death; but Appian (App. BC 5.9) says that it was Arsinoë, Cleopatra's sister, and that she was taken from sanctuary in the temple of Artemis Leucophryne at Miletus. Appian's account is the more trustworthy, for he speaks of the priest of Ephesus, whom they call Megabyzus,narrowly escaping the vengeance of Antonius, because he had once received Arsinoe as a queen. Before the sea-fight at Actium the fleet of M. Antonius and Cleopatra was collected at Ephesus, and he came there with Cleopatra. After the battle of Actium, Caesar Octavianus permitted Ephesus and Nicaea, the chief cities of Asia and Bithynia, respectively to dedicate temples to. the deified dictator Caesar.
Strabo terminates his description of Ephesus with a list of the illustrious natives, among whom was Heraclitus, surnamed the Obscure; and Hermodorus, who was banished by the citizens for his merits. This is the Hermodorus who is said to have assisted the Roman Decemviri in drawing up the Tables. (Dig. 1. 2. 2.4.) Hipponax the poet was also an Ephesian, and Parrhasius the painter. Strabo also mentions Apelles as an Ephesian, but that is not certain. Of modern men of note he mentions only Alexander, surnamed the Light, who was engaged in public affairs, wrote history, and astronomical and geographical poems in hexameter verse. Strabo does not mention Callinus, and it would seem, that as he speaks of him elsewhere, he did not take him to be an Ephesian; and, among the men nearer his own time, he has not mentioned the geographer Artemidorus in this passage, though he does mention Artemidorus, the same man, as being sent to Rome about the lakes and the revenues from them. Accordingly, Koray and, Groskurd suppose that the name Artemidorus has dropped out of the MSS. of Strabo, and that Strabo must have mentioned him with Alexander the Light.
When Strabo was at Ephesus, in the days of Auguastus, the town was in a state, of great prosperity. The trade, of Ephesus had .extended so far, that the minium of Cappadocia, which used to be carried to Sinope now went to Ephesus. Apameia, at the source of the Marsyas,. was the second commercial place. in. the Roman. province of Asia, Ephesus being the first,. for it was the place that received all. the commodities from Greece and Italy. (Strab.. pp. 540, 5.77.) There was a road from Ephesus. to Antiocheia on the Maeander, through Magnesia on the Maeander, Tralles, and Nysa. From Antiocheia the road. went to Garura [CARURA], on the borders of Caria and Phrygia. From Carura. the road. was continued to Laodiceia, Apameia, Metropolis, Chelidonii (a corrupt word, which is supposed to represent Philomelium), and Tyriaeum; then it ran through Lycaonia through Laodiceia, the Burnt, to Coropassus; and from Coropassus, which was in Lycaonia, to Garsaura in Cappadocia, on the borders; then through Soandus and Sadakora to Mazaca [CAESAREA], the metrotropolis of the Cappadocians; and from Mazaca through Herphae to Tomisa in Sophene. (Strab. pp. 647, 663.)
It does not appear from, Strabo how the Ephesii managed the affairs of the town in his time. He speaks of a senate (γερουσία) being made by Lysimachus, and the senate with certain persons called the Epicleti managed the affairs of the city. We may conclude that it had a Boule, and also a Demus or popular assembly. A town clerk of Ephesus (γραμματεύς), a common functionary in Greek cities, is mentioned. ( Acts of the Apost. 19.35.); An imperfect inscription, copied by Chishull ( Travels in Turkey, &100. p. 20), shows that there was an office (ἀρχεῖον) in Ephesus for the registry of titles within the territory.
In the time of Tiberius there were great complaints of the abuses of asyla., The Ephesii (Tac. Ann. 3.61) were heard before the Roman senate in defence of the asylum of Artemis, when they told the whole mythical story of the origin of the temple; they also referred to what Hercules had done for the temple; and, coming nearer to the business, they said that the Persians had always respected it, and after them the Macedonians, and finally the Romans. Plutarch (De vitando aere alieno, 100.31) says that the temple was an asylum for debtors, and it is probable that the precincts were generally well filled. In the reign of Nero, Barea Soranus, during his government of Asia, tried to open the port, which the bad judgment of the king of Pergamum and his architects had spoiled. (Tac. Ann. 16.23.)
When St. Paul visited Ephesus ( Acts of the Apost. xix.), one Demetrius, a silversmith which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen.He called his men together, and showed them that their trade was in danger from the preaching of Paul, who taught that they be no gods, which are made with hands; so that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.The town clerk, by a prudent and moderate speech, settled the tumult. Among other things, he told them that the image of Diana fell down from Jupiter. Pliny (Plin. Nat. 16.40) mentions an old wooden statue of Diana at Ephesus. Licinius Mucianus, a contemporary of Pliny, had examined it, and he said that it had never.been changed, though the temple had been restored seven times. The representative of the Asiatic .goddess' was not that of the huntress Artemis of. the Hellenes. Miller observes that, Artemis, as the guardian of the Ephesian temple, which, according to the myth, was founded by the Amazons, appears in an Asiatic Amazonian costume. The worship of. her image, which was widely spread, and in the later imperial period repeated innumerable times in statues and on coins, is connected with the Hellenic representations of Artemis by no visible link.( Handbuch der Archaeologie. ) The old statue that fell down from Jupiter may have been a stone, an aërolite; and the wooden statue that Mucianus saw, some very rude piece of work. According to Minucius Felix (100.21), the Ephesian Diana.was represented with many breasts. (See the notes on Tac. Ann. 3.61, ed. Oberlin.)
The apostle established a Christian church at Ephesus, and we learn from what he said to the elders of the..church of: Ephesus, when they met him at Miletus ( Acts, 20.17—31), that he had lived there, three years. He afterwards addressed a letter to the Ephesians, which forms part of the canonical New Testament. In the book of Revelations (2.11 &c.) the church of Ephesus is placed first among the seven churches of Asia. The heathen and the Christian church of Ephesus subsisted together for some time. The great festival called τὸ κοινὸν Ἀσίαςwas held in several of the chief towns in turn, of which Ephesus was one. In A.D. 341 the third general council was held at Ephesus. The Asiarchs who are mentioned.in the Acts of the Apostles (19.31), on the occasion of the tumult in Ephesus, are probably, as Schleusner says, the representatives from the cities of Asia, who had the charge of the religious solemnities.;. or they may have been the Asiarchs of Ephesus. only. Under the Christian emperors Ephesus has the title of ἡ πρώτη καὶ μεγίστη μητρόπολις τῆς Ἀσίας.
The remains of Ephesus are partly buried in rubbish, and overgrown with vegetation. They are near a place now called Ayasaluk. These remains have been visited and described by many travellers, but it is difficult without a plan of the ground to understand the descriptions. Spon and Wheler visited the place in 1675, and described it after the fashion of that day (vol. 1. p. 244). The ruins have also been described by Chishull ( Travels in Turkey, &100. p. 23, &c.), and at some length by Chandler (Asia Minor, 100.32, &c.), and by many other more recent travellers. The disappearance of such a huge mass as the temple of Diana can only be explained by the fact of the materials having been carried off for modern buildings; and probably this and other places near the coast supplied materials for Constantinople. The soil in the valley has also been raised by the alluvium of the river, and probably covers many old substructions. The temple of Ephesus, being the centre of the pagan worship in Asia, would be one of the first to suffer from the iconoclasts in the reign of Theodosius I., when men in black, as Libanius calls them, overturned the altars, and defaced the temples. When the great Diana of the Ephesians was turned out of her home, the building could serve no other purpose than to be used as a stone quarry.
Chandler found the stadium of Ephesus, one side of which was on the hill which he identifies with Prion, and the opposite side which was next to the plain was raised on arches. He found the length to be 687 feet. He also describes the remains of the theatre, which is mentioned in the tumult which was caused at Ephesus by St. Paul's preaching. Fellows (Asia Minor, p. 274) observes that there can be no doubt about the site of the theatre. Chandler saw also the remains of an odeum or music hall. There are the remains of a temple of the Corinthian order, which was about 130 feet long, and 80 wide. The cella was built of massive stones. The columns were 4 feet 6 inches in diameter, and the whole height, including the base and capitals, above 46 feet. The shafts were fluted, and of a single piece of stone. The best preserved of these columns that Chandler saw was broken into two parts. The frieze contained a portion of bold sculpture, which represented some foliage and young boys. The quarries on Prion or Pion, for the name is written both ways, supplied the marble for the temples of Ephesus. Prion, was Strabo has it, was also called Lepre Acte; it was above the city of Strabo's time, and on it, as he says, was part of the wall.
Hamilton ( Researches, &c. vol. 2. p. 24), one of the latest travellers who has visited Ephesus, spent several days there. He thinks that the site of the great temple is in some massive structures near the western extremity of the town, which overlook the swamp or marsh where was the ancient harbour.This is exactly the spot where it ought to be according to Strabo's description. The place which Hamilton describes is immediately in front of the port, raised upon a base thirty or forty feet high, and approached by a grand flight of steps the ruins of which are still visible in the centre of the pile.Hamilton observes that brick arches and other works have also been raised on various portions of the walls; but this was probably done by the Christians after the destruction of the temple and the removal of the columns by Constantine when a church was erected on its ruins.The supposition that the basement of the temple has been buried by the alluvium of the Cayster is very properly rejected by Hamilton, who has pointed out the probable site. Pliny describes a spring in the city and names it Callipia, which may be the Alitaea of Pausanias. Hamilton found a beautiful spring to the north of the harbour; the head of the spring was about 200 yards from the temple. The distance of the temple, supposed. to be near the port from the old city on the heights seems to agree with the story in Herodotus (Hdt. 1.26). The position of the tomb of Androclus, as described by Pausanias is quite consistent with this supposed site of th great temple. Hamilton observes that the road which Pausanias describes must have led along the valley between Prion and Coressus, which extends towards Magnesia, and is crossed by the line of walls erected by Lysimachus. The Magnesia Gates would also have stood in this valley, and must not be confounded with those which are in the direction of Aiasaluck. Hamilton supposes that the Olympieium may have stood in the space between the temple of Artemis and the theatre in the neighbourhood of the agora, where he found the remains of a large Corinthian temple, which is that which Chandler describes.
Hamilton describes the Hellenic wall of Lysimachus as extending along the heights of Coressus for nearly a mile and three quarters, in a SE. and NW. direction, from the heights immediately to the S. of the gymnasium to the tower called the Prison; of St. Paul, but which is in fact one of the towers of the ancient wall, closely resembling many others which occur at various intervals. The portion which connected Mount Prion with Mount Coressus, and in which was the Magnesian Gate, appears to have been immediately to the east of the gymnasium.The wall is well built. Hamilton gives a drawing of a perfect gateway in the wall, with a peculiar arch. He observed also another wall extending from the theatre over the top of Mount Prion, and thence to. the eastern extremity of the stadium. He thinks that this may be the oldest wall. Besides this wall and that supposed to be Lysimachus', already described, he found another wall, principally of brick, which he supposes to have been built by the Byzantines PLAN OF EPHESUS.This plan is from Kiepert, and will be useful to the readers of this article; but the writer does not suppose that every spot here indicated can be considered as rightly fixed yet.A. Harbour, now filled up.B. Road to Colophon.CC. River Caystrus.DD. River Cenchrius.EE. Road to Samos.FF. Coressus.GG. Prion.HH. Road to Magnesia.II. Road to Sardes and Smyrna.J. Inner harbour, now a swamp.KK. River Selinus.1. Temple of Artemis of Epheus.2. Great building belonging to the harbour, incorrectly supposed to be the temple of Artemis.3. Agora surrounded by pillars.4. Corinthian temple.5. Tombs.6. Odeium.7. Olympieium.8. Large theatre.9. Stadium.10. Magnesian gates.11. Gymnasium.when the town had diminished in size: considerable remains of this may still be traced at the foot of Mount Coressus, extending from near the theatre westward to the port and temple of Diana.There are remains of an aqueduct at Ephesus. Spon and Wheler also describe a series of arches as being five or six miles from Ephesus on the road to Scala Nova, with an inscription in honour of Diana and the emperors Tiberius and Augustus.
Hamilton copied a few inscriptions at Ephesus (vol. 2. p. 455). Chandler copied others, which were published in his Inscriptiones Antiquae,&c. In the Antiquities of Ionia,vol. ii., there are views of the remains of Ephesus, and plans. Some of the coins of Ephesus of the Roman period have a reclining figure that represents the river Cayster, with the legend Ἐφεσιων Καυστρος.Arundell ( Discourses in Asia Minor, vol. ii.) has collected some particulars about the Christian history of Ephesus. The reader may also consult the Life and Epistles of St. Paul by Conybeare and Howson, vol. 2. p. 66, &c.
The name of the village of Aiasalucknear Smyrna is generally said to be a corruption of Ἅγιος Θεόλογος, a name of St. John, to whom the chief Christian church of Ephesus was dedicated (Procop. de Aedif. 5.1). But, as Arundell observes, this is very absurd: and he supposes it to be a Turkish name. Tamerlane encamped here after he had taken Smyrna. The name is written Ayazlicby Tamerlane's historian Cherefeddin Ali (French Translation, by Petis de la Croix, vol. 4. p. 58). It has been conjectured that Tamerlane destroyed the place, but his historian says nothing about that. Ephesus had perished before the days of Tamerlane. COIN OF EPHESUS.
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