Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/237

Rh flourished there, and the temple retained all its original splendor. Pilgrims to the venerated abode of the goddess used to buy little models of the temple in silver, or precious stones, as mementos of their visit, and as amulets to insure to them the protection of the Ephesian Diana. The Goths sacked the city and burned the temple, about 200 years later, and in the reign of Theodosius I., toward the end of the fourth century, the furious zeal of the Iconoclasts, or Image-breakers, completed the work of destruction. The ancient city almost entirely disappeared before the modern era, the very site of the temple being lost.

In 1863 an Englishman, Mr. J. T. Wood, while engaged as a civil-engineer in constructing a railway from Smyrna to Aidin, discovered at Ayasalouk the ruins of the Odeum, or Lyric Theatre of Ephesus, and this circumstance led him to commence excavations in that locality in search of the temple of Diana. He began his excavations on the west side of the ancient city, at a point where a long rise of ground above the level of the plain seemed to cover the portico of the temple. Here he found nothing but the remains of a Roman monument; so he went on digging trial-holes in every direction on the west side, and explored the great Gymnasium, which proved to be a Roman building, erected on the site of a former Grecian structure of similar character. On the surface of the ground, in the vicinity of this Gymnasium, were the remains of some columns of Egyptian silex. At some former time seven of these columns were carried away to Constantinople, and there set up in the church of Saint Sophia, now the Great Mosque. Hitherto they have been regarded as columns from the temple at Ephesus, but erroneously.

The plain has been filled up to the average height of about 15 feet. Digging in the agora, forum, or market-place of the ancient city, Mr. Wood found what he calls a baptismal font, the diameter of which is 15 feet. Its basin is 15 inches deep, and in the centre is an elevated pedestal, on which the minister of baptism might stand dry-shod, the postulants standing in the water. Other monuments of Christian antiquity were also discovered.

But there was yet no sign of the temple, and the literary remains of antiquity gave no indication as to its site. His private funds being now exhausted, the trustees of the British Museum were applied to by Mr. Wood for the means necessary to carry on the work of exploring the Odeum, or Lyric Theatre, in the hope of finding there some bas-relief, or other monument, or at least some idle scratching of a rough artist of the time, which might give some indication of the site of the great temple. In this hope he was encouraged by what he had years before seen in Venice and other places, viz., the plans of cities cut in bas-relief upon the pinnacles of the churches. The trustees of the British Museum having made the required grant of funds, Mr. Wood began the exploration of the Odeum. He found his way