"I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, 'Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand.'"
Antipater, Greek Anthology (IX.58)
Designed by the architect Chersiphron, with many of the columns, relates Herodotus (I.92), erected at the expense of Croesus, the fabulously wealthy king of Lydia (ruled 560-546 BC), the Ionic temple of Artemis at Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor was a wonder of the world. The first temple to be entirely of marble and the largest Greek temple ever built, it was some 377 feet long and 180 feet wide (larger by twenty feet on a side than a football field). Constructed on marshy ground, says Pliny (XXXVI. 21), so as not to be in danger from earthquakes, the foundation was laid on a bed of packed charcoal and sheepskins, the column drums and architraves moved from the quarry, relates Vitruvius (X.2.11-12), by fitting them with large wheels and then, like rolling axles, having them pulled by oxen.
Pliny goes on to say that the temple had 127 columns, each sixty feet high. Vitruvius (III.2.7) describes it as dipteral octastyle, that is, two rows of columns around the temple with eight on the front and rear façades. The few scattered remains, however, do not reveal a ground plan. One arrangement of the requisite number of columns is to have a double row of twenty-one along the sides, three rows of eight columns on the principle façade, two rows of nine columns at the rear, and the remainder filling the pronaos and opisthodomos (the front and back porches). Thirty-six of these columns, says Pliny, were carved with reliefs, one of them by Scopas (who he also said worked on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus). And, indeed, a huge sculptured drum, the only one in good enough condition to have been sent back to the British Museum, was found. But it would be a remarkable coincidence if this base had been carved by Scopas.
Ephesus was thought to have been founded by Amazons, and their statues in bronze were dedicated to the temple about 450 BC. Pliny relates that there was a competition among the artists, whom he identifies as Polyclitus, Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon. "The best one should be selected by the vote of the artists themselves who were present; and it then became evident that the best was the one which all the artists judged to be the next best after their own: this is the Amazon by Polycleitus, while next to it came that of Pheidias..." (XXXIV.19.53). Roman copies, of similar size and dress but of three different types, show the wounded figure with her right arm raised over her head, sometimes leaning on a spear.
Pliny says that the temple took one hundred twenty years to complete. A variant reading indicates two hundred years, which is the approximate time from the construction of the temple about 560 BC to its destruction. In 356 BC, on the night when Alexander the Great was said to have been born, the temple was deliberately burned down by Herostratus, who, setting fire to the wooden frame of the roof, hoped to immortalize his name. Artemis, herself, was said by Plutarch to have been absent from the shrine, assisting in the delivery of Alexander. The story of this infamous act is related by Valerius Maximus (VIII.14.5), where he says that "A man was found to plan the burning of the temple of Ephesian Diana so that through the destruction of this most beautiful building his name might be spread through the whole world." The Ephesians, however, decreed that his name never be recorded (Aulus Gellius, II.6.18), and it would not be known had not Strabo (XIV.1.22) revealed it (originally, the name had been preserved by Theopompus in his Philippica but that work is lost).
Although rebuilding soon began, the temple still was unfinished when Alexander the Great liberated Ephesus in 334 BC and offered to pay all its expenses, if he were to have credit for his generosity, but Strabo relates that the offer was refused by the Ephesians, who diplomatically said that it was "inappropriate for a god to dedicate offerings to gods."
Gibbon writes of the Temple of Artemis:
"The arts of Greece, and the wealth of Asia, had conspired to erect that sacred and magnificent structure....Successive empires, the Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman, had revered its sanctity, and enriched its splendour. But the rude savages of the Baltic were destitute of a taste for the elegant arts, and they despised the ideal terrors of a foreign superstition."
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (X)
The Goths destroyed the temple in AD 262 (Jordanes, XX.107). What survived of this wonder of the world was pulled down and burned for lime by Christians in AD 401. Only a single forlorn column remains, assembled from scattered drums excavated at the marshy site where it stood. To imagine how it must once have appeared, one must look to the nearby temple of Apollo, the twin brother of Artemis, at Didyma.
So different from the Roman image of Diana, with whom Artemis was associated, this second-century AD statue (on the left), which is the best example of the Ephesian cult statue, is in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Fashioned in alabaster and bronze, the breasts (or possibly eggs or the testicles of sacrificial bulls) symbolize the fruitfulness and bounty of nature, as does the modius (a grain measure) on her head. The statue on the right, made more radiant still by the late afternoon sun streaming through the window, is in the Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori (Rome).
References: The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (1988) edited by Peter A. Clayton and Martin J. Price; The Seven Wonders of the World (1995) by John and Elizabeth Romer; The Archaeology of Greece: An Introduction (1987) by William R. Biers; Art in the Hellenic Age (1986) by J. J. Pollitt; Greek Sculpture: The Classical Period (1985) by John Boardman.
Pliny: Natural History (1938-) translated by H. Rackham et al. (Loeb Classical Library); Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1960) translated by Morris Morgan (Dover Books); Greek Anthology (IX: The Declamatory Epigrams) (1917) translated by W. R. Paton (Loeb Classical Library); Valerius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings (2000) translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Loeb Classical Library); The Geography of Strabo (1929) translated by Horace Leonard Jones (Loeb Classical Library); Aulus Gellius: Attic Nights (1927) translated by John C. Rolfe (Loeb Classical Library); Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1995) edited by David Womersley (Penguin Classics); Herodotus: The Histories (1954) translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt (Penguin Classics); The Gothic History of Jordanes (1915) translated by Charles Christopher Mierow.
