A rainy day at the ruins of Ephesus on May 18, 2010

"Great Is Artemis of the Ephesians"

From the Adriatic to the Aegean, We Arrive at Ancient Ephesus.

By Ron Fritze from the MS Splendour of the Seas
on the Aegean Sea not far from Kusadasi, Turkey
Filed on May 18 and posted on May 22, 2010

The cruise ship Splendour of the Seas sailed from Venice about 5:30 p.m on Saturday. It was a drizzly and somewhat chilly day. That was unfortunate. The ship’s slow passage through the Venetian Lagoon took us along the length of the city and into the Adriatic, offering lots of opportunities for great pictures. A bit of sun would have made it much nicer in terms of visual quality and personal comfort.

The next morning we reached Dubrovnik, Croatia. During the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era, Dubrovnik was known as Ragusa. It was an important, strategically located port of trade at the southern end of the Dalmatian archipelago. Cruise ships sail into a long bay that lies roughly north of the old town of Dubrovnik.

Hoodoo Hoodie

We were told that getting from the terminal to Old Town required either a forty-five minute walk or a ten-minute bus ride. I prefer to walk, but on this Sunday morning, the rain and mist, following us from Venice, eliminated foot travel as a sensible option. This cruise is my fifth with Sixth Star Entertainment, the agency that books my speaking engagements, but it’s my first without a jacket or a hoodie in the suitcase. On previous cruises, I never needed the hoodie I had so dutifully packed. This time, past experience failed me. My hoodie was back home in Athens.

Someone pointed out that my mistake might have brought-on the foul weather. Rain or shine, I was not about to miss Old Town. It is a very well preserved historic site with massive fortifications. So I bought a ticket for the shuttle bus.

Fortification in the Old Town of Dubrovnik  ~  May 16, 2010

The weather grew chiller and rainier with each passing minute, but I stuck it out for thirty minutes, snapped some good pictures, and climbed back onto the bus. It is a measure of my desperation that I did not get to try a Croatian beer.

The third day of the cruise was a sea day. I gave my first lecture on Ephesus to a very good crowd of at least eighty people in the ship’s 42nd Street Theater. My audience was attentive, appreciative, and asked lots of questions — a great experience for me, so much nicer than teaching college freshmen, many of whom I count among the legion of the dreadfully bored, assuming they come to class. (For those of you who I taught as freshmen, you are the good ones! You were interested. You have to be, if you are reading this.)

From Kusadasi to Ancient Ephesus

On day four, the Splendour, navigating around southern Greece into the Aegean Sea, stopped at the Turkish port of Kusadasi, a modern city located about forty minutes by bus from the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus. From our berth on the Aegean coast we could see a hill to the right with a statue at the summit. It is a monument to the Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic and a much-revered man among the Turks.

The statue known as Attaboy gazes into the Aegean ~ May 18, 2010

Three summers ago, being largely incorrigible, I told Twylia it was actually a statue honoring the Ataturk’s son, who is known as the Attaboy in Turkey. She sneered and told me that I should turn my demented sense of humor toward writing something that makes real money.

Rainy at the Home of the Goddess

I signed up for the Ancient Ephesus tour, a repeat of an excursion that Twylia and I enjoyed three summers ago. Remembering how hot it was on that tour, I packed my sunscreen and was relieved that the bus provided us with bottled water. And I left my umbrella in the room. Not twenty minutes after arriving at the ruins, I was caught in a downpour! Our group huddled into an ancient hallway to stay dry until the rain passed, allowing us to resume the tour. But five minutes later it was raining again.

Taking refuge in a portico built into a hill, clustered with a mixture of tourists, with only one English couple from my group of shipmates among us, I watched as rained and rained. There is this marble Arcadian Way that is the main street through Ephesus. It sloops downward, and after a while it would have been possible to do some white water rafting on the runoff cascading down the hill. Everyone pretty much ended up soaked. What an experience!

We boarded our bus and were driven back to Kusadasi for the customary sales pitch by merchants of Turkish rugs. The rugs were beautiful, but I resisted. I am on a mission from God, or rather for Twylia, which is almost identical in seriousness — and the mission culminates at Santorini in Greece. You’ll hear more on that situation in a later dispatch. Escaping the rug merchants, I seized the opportunity to try a Turkish beer called Efes Pilsen. Like a normal pilsner, it was light but somewhat bitter. Delicious! — and I would have gladly tried another, but responsibility intervened, given that my lecture about Ephesus was scheduled for the afternoon. If you get a chance to try an Efes, do so. I recommend it enthusiastically.

Library of Celsus at ruins of Ephesus  ~  May 18, 2010

Speaking of Ephesus, the ancient city is best known to most people as the home of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It also featured significantly in the missionary career of St. Paul, as one of his more important Epistles was written to the congregation at Ephesus. Otherwise, Ephesus does not have the type of historical profile that many cities of the ancient Mediterranean possess. It was not a Rome or a Carthage, not an Athens or a Sparta, not an Alexandria or a Jerusalem. Still, it was an important city in the ancient world, although it has become a ghost town today.

Up River and Protected

Ephesus was located on the Cayster River in Asia Minor, near where it enters the Aegean Sea. Prior to the modern era, most seaports were located up a river, not on a harbor along the coastline of a sea. Through most of human history, ports have been subject to attack by enemy navies or pirates. A location directly on a coastal harbor would be too vulnerable to attack, unless it was heavily fortified.

Being up river also gave ports more time to heed warnings about approaching attackers, and the small size of ships through most of human history allowed easy navigation to riverine port facilities.

Unfortunately, ports located up a river suffer from silting, often so severe that it blocks passage to the inlet. The biggest reason why Ephesus is a ghost town is that it was silted up by the Cayster. When John T. Wood rediscovered the location of the Temple of Artemis during his excavations in the 1860s and 1870s, he had to dig through twelve feet of accumulated silt. During the Hellenistic era and the height of the Roman Empire, dredging staved off the silting of Ephesus’s port. With the decline of the Roman Empire and the increased instability of governments, silting got ahead of dredging. The sea trade now goes through nearby Izmir or Smyrna. Such a fate has befallen other ports such as Seville, Rye, and Miletus.

It appears that aboriginal peoples of Asia Minor first occupied the site of Ephesus. Mycenaean Greeks colonized the site in the Late Bronze Age, about 1500-1200 B.C. Ionian Greeks began to colonize Asia Minor about 1000 B.C.

Amazons, a River God, Androchus

There are several myths about the foundation of Ephesus. One story credits the Amazons with founding the city. Another credits Ephesus, the son of the River Cayster. Finally, Androchus, the son of Codrus, king of Athens, is said by the Roman geographer Strabo to have founded Ephesus. That last story is an echo of actual Ionian colonization.

Ephesus, along with the other Greek cities of Ionia, was conquered by Croesus, the king of Lydia (560-546 BC). Croesus is legendary as being the wealthiest ruler of his age. Under Croesus’s patronage, Ephesus was transformed from being a Greek city into a sort of hybrid city where Greek and Asiatic influences merged and mixed.

Unfortunately for Croesus, he attacked the rising Persian Empire and was defeated by Cyrus the Great at the battle of Thymbra in 546. The Persians went on to take control of the Greek cities of Ionia. Ephesus came under Greek control again when Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire during 334-330 BC. Ephesus was ruled by various successors of Alexander the Great until it came into Roman possession in 133 BC.

The area around Ephesus was blessed by abundant natural resources, both agricultural and mineral. The Romans called the region Asia. A rich region long before the coming of the Romans, it became one of the wealthiest provinces in their great empire. Through all of the political and social changes that beset it, Ephesus prospered.

The Fifth Try Made a Wonder.

As mentioned, Ephesus is famous as the home of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Temple is recognized as the largest Greek temple ever built.

History tells us that not one, but five temples of Artemis occupied the site in Ephesus. The three earliest temples were from the era prior to the conquest of the Ephesus by Croesus. To honor the conquest by the Lydian king, the Ephesians decided to erect a magnificent new temple for Artemis. The wealthy and generous Croesus provided much of the financing around 550 BC. The cult of Artemis was quite cosmopolitan, attracting worshipers from throughout the ancient world.

For the ancient Greeks, Artemis was the goddess of hunting and archery. (The Romans knew her as Diana.) She was also a defender of animals, women, children, and any weaker party. It is easy to uncover the roots of her connection with the Amazons, who supposedly founded Ephesus. Artemis was a virgin and a protector of virginity, but at her core, she was also a fertility goddess.

Other Mediterranean cultures raised similar pantheons of gods, and in the context of cross-cultural connections, Artemis can also be identified with Cybele, the fertility goddess of the Phrygians, and with the Hittite goddess Hepat, among others.

The Fire of Herostratus

This fourth temple, Croesus’ temple, flourished until 356 BC when it was destroyed by arson at the hands of a man named Herostratus, who set his destructive blaze on the night of 21 July, the very same night that Alexander the Great was born. How could this vile deed have happened? The story goes that the goddess Artemis was away from her temple, attending to the princess Olympias of Epirus during her labor. It is also said that Herostratus’s motive was to immortalize his name — and it worked, as the name Herostratus became synonymous with a person who achieves notoriety through a senseless and evil act.

The Ephesians immediately began to plan for rebuilding the Temple. Hearing of the plans, the young Alexander the Great, engaged in conquering the Persian Empire, offered to pay for the rebuilding, but the Ephesians turned him down, supposedly because they felt it was not right for one god to build a monument to another god.

The Artemision at Ephesus, fresco, 1669-70

This fifth Temple of Artemis was huge, much larger than the Parthenon, measuring 70 x 130 meters and containing 127 great columns, each two meters in diameter and 20 meters tall. Thirty-six of the columns featured bases decorated with bas-reliefs. In the temple interior, a huge and intricately decorated statue of Artemis stood as a testament to the greatness of the patron goddess.

Completed over 100 years after the Parthenon and graced by the highly decorative Ionic style, the Temple of Artemis quickly gained favor in the ancient world. The overwhelming testimony of ancient writers is that it was a much more highly regarded building than the Parthenon. In fact, the Parthenon was not much praised in the writings of Classical authors. It was the enormity of scale and the magnificent decoration of the Temple of Artemis that allowed it to be recognized as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

For the Ephesians, the Temple became not only a source of pride but also a major economic asset, attracting tourists and pilgrims from all over the ancient world. Worshipers brought much business and money into the city, artisans crafted souvenirs and ritual items, and merchants hustled items for sacrifice — a scene that made the money-changers in the Temple of Jerusalem during the ministry of Christ look like small-time operators.

Paul Threatens the Foundation.

When St. Paul arrived to preach Christianity to the Ephesians, he represented a major threat to entrenched economic interests of the great city.

Paul preached about his faith in Ephesus, but he also used the city as a hub for his missionary journeys, underlying the importance of Ephesus in the trading and transportation network of the ancient Mediterranean world. Successful in his preaching, Paul attracted many converts. His success angered some of the pagans. As Acts 19 describes it:

For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover yet see and hear, that not alone in Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands; so that not only 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. And when they head these sayings, they were full of wrath and cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

A riot followed the speech by Demetrius, forcing civic authorities to calm things down. But Christianity had gained its foothold. Later, Christians in Ephesus would face persecutions, but ultimately Christianity would become the dominant religion of Ephesus.

Christians went from tribulation to triumph over time, but the fortunes of Ephesus declined with the fortunes of the Roman Empire.

During 235-268 AD, the Roman Empire experienced a period of turmoil, undermining the stability of the state and the office of emperor. One after another, generals and politician tried to grab the throne through military coup or political intrigue. Meanwhile, Germanic tribes and the Persians were threatening Rome’s borders.

The Goths, living in what is now the Ukraine, took to the Black Sea on piratical raids against the Roman Empire from 253-268. Sailing into the Aegean, they sacked Ephesus and damaged the Temple of Diana so badly that it was never restored to its former glory. As it gradually fell into ruin, Ephesus during the fourth and seventh centuries was severely damaged by earthquakes, leading, ultimately, to its abandonment. With the riverine inlet to the sea neglected, the Cayster River silted over the site of the once great city, while local people plundered its ruins for building materials. The memory of Ephesus survived but its location was lost for a thousand years.

The New Discipline of Archaeology
Leads to a Thrilling Discovery.

During the nineteenth century, when the discipline of archaeology was in its infancy, the German Heinrich Schliemann dreamed of finding Troy, but had not started his excavation. Instead, an Englishman, John T. Wood, drawing on Schliemann’s dreams of uncovering ancient glories, became the first to thrill the world by announcing his expedition to find another legendary city, the home of the wondrous Temple of Diana.

Wood was an architect. In 1858 he was working in Smyrna. The job lasted five years. During that time he developed the idea of searching for Ephesus. In 1863 at age 46, he persuaded the British Museum to support his efforts and help him get a license to excavate from the Turks. He resigned his job, using his personal savings to support his expedition. Years of patient digging proceeded — and then, in 1874, the foundation of the Temple and fallen columns were discovered.

Meanwhile, Schliemann had begun his dig, and stole Woods’ fire by uncovering the ruins of Troy in 1870. Nonetheless, Woods’ discovery was significant. The site of Ephesus became a tourist attraction of sorts while Woods was digging — and it remains a tourist attraction today, bolstered by the completion of a railroad line to the site of the ancient city. One of the columns has been partially restored to give visitors an idea of just how big that Temple was in its heyday.

Both the Temple and Ephesus itself are reminders that things and places of seeming permanence often pass away. Tomorrow, day five, we arrive at the island of Santorini, ancient Thera, the site of a gigantic volcanic explosion in the Bronze Age and the possible inspiration of the Atlantis myth.

Click on the black panther to read the first installment of Ron's 2010 cruise dispatches, Venice: Solo in the Veneto.