Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/488

Rh 468 E P H E S U S the latter presenting a quantity of gold and silver images to be carried annually in procession. Ephesus contested stoutly with Smyrna and Pergamus the honour of being called the first city of Asia ; each city appealed to Rome, and we still possess rescripts in which the emperors endeavour to mitigate the bitterness of the rivalry. The Goths destroyed both city and temple in the year 262 A.D.; and although the city revived, it never recovered its former splendour. A general council of the church was held there ia 341 ; but by the 15th century it had sunk into a wretched village, the name of which, Ayasaluk, is now known to be a corruption of the title of St John, Hagios Theologos. The ruins of the temple, after serving as a quarry to the beautifiers of Constantinople, the Turkish conquerors, and the mediaeval Italians, were finally covered deep with mud by the river Cayster, and its true site was unsuspected until the laborious excavations of Mr Wood were rewarded with success in the year 1869. The organization of the temple hierarchy, and its customs and privileges, retained throughout an Oriental and some what ascetic tinge. The priestesses of the goddess, termed Melissae or bees, were virgins, and her priests were com pelled to celibacy. The chief among the latter, who bore the Persian name of Megabyzus and the Greek title Neocorus, was doubtless a power in the state as well as a dignitary of religion. Besides these, there was a vast throng of dependants who lived by the temple and its services, theologi, who may have expounded sacred legends, hymnodi, who composed hymns in honour of the deity, and others, together with a great crowd of hierodulas who performed more menial offices. The making of shrines and images of the goddess occupied many hands. To support this greedy mob offerings were flowing in in a constant stream from votaries and from visitors, who contributed sometimes money and sometimes statues and works of art. These latter so accumulated that the temple became a rich museum, among the chief treasures of which were the figures of Amazons sculptured in competition by Phidias, Polycletus, Cresilas, and Phradmon, and the painting by Apelles of Alexander holding a thunderbolt. The temple was also richly endowed in lands, and possessed the fishery of the Selinusian lakes, with other large revenues. But perhaps the most important of all the privileges possessed by the goddess and her priests was that of asylum. Fugitives from justice or vengeance who reached her precincts were perfectly safe from all pursuit and arrest. The boundaries of the space possessing such virtue were from time to time enlarged. Mithradates extended them to a bow-shot from the temple in all directions, and Mark Antony imprudently allowed them to take in part of the city, which part thus became free of all law, and a haunt of thieves and villains. Augustus, while leaving the right of asylum untouched, diminished the space to which the privilege belonged, and built round it a wall, which still surrounds the ruins of the temple at the distance of about a quarter of a mile, bearing an inscription in Greek and Latin, which states that it was erected in the proconsulship of Asinius Gallus, out of the revenues of the temple. Besides being a place of worship, a museum, and a sanctuary, the Ephesian temple was a great bank. Nowhere in Asia could money be more safely bestowed than here ; therefore both kings and private persons placed their treasures under the guardianship of the goddess. The government of the city is a matter of some obscurity. We know that for some time after its founda tion it was ruled by kings of the race of Codrus, and after wards by archons who belonged to the same stock. In the time of Lysander it was under an oligarchy; Alexander re-established the democracy. We have the titles of several magistrates in imperial times, but without exactly knowing their functions. The tumult raised by Demetrius against Paul was quelled by the town-clerk or recorder (ypa//./Aarei;s). Inscriptions mention archons, strategi, gymnasiarchs, psedonomi, and Asiarchs, besides the religious functionaries ; but no doubt the chief power rested with the senate and the demos. The topography of Ephesus was but very imperfectly known until the excavations conducted by Mr J. T. Wood on behalf of the trustees of the British Museum during the years 1863-74. He first explored the Odeum and the Great Theatre situate in the city itself, and in the latter place had the good fortune to find an inscription which indicated to him in what direction to search for the temple, for it stated that processions came to the city from the temple by the Magnesian gate, and returned by the Coressian. These two gates were next identified, and following up that road which issued from the Magnesian gate, Mr Wood lighted first on the tomb of Androclus, and afterwards on Scheme of Temple of Artemis or Diana at Ephesus. an angle of the peribolus wall of the time of Augustus. He next found and excavated the site of the temple of Artemis. He found remains of more than one temple ; three separate floors being clearly distinguishable one above the other. Of these the lowest consisted of a layer of charcoal between two of putty. It is probable that this was the floor of the temple of Croesus s time, which Chersiphron was said to have made with charcoal and fleeces. Above this lowest floor were two others of marble, which would seem to have belonged, one to the temple burned by Herostratus, the other to that erected on ita ruins immediately afterwards. Of this latter building the remains were sufficient to enable Mr Wood to restore it with considerable accuracy. The dimensions of it, takeii at the lowest step of the flight which led up to the peristyle on all sides, were 418 feet 1 inch by 239 feet 4| inche?. The number of the external columns was 100, their height about 56 feet. It is observable that the dimensions given by Pliny seem to be in every case incorrect. The most re markable fact about the columns is that many of them were sculptured with figures in high relief to a man s height