Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/236

224 to the temple, stood a basin of porphyry, 15 feet in diameter, for the worshipers to lave and purify themselves in. The internal decoration was of the most sumptuous kind. The cedar roof Avas supported on pillars of jasper; the doors were of cypress. The altar was the work of Praxiteles, and it was surrounded by many statues, one



of them of gold. The image of the goddess herself was roughly hewed out of wood, black with age, and greasy with the oil with which it was customary to anoint it. When the apostle Paul visited Ephesus in the middle of the first century, the worship of Diana still