Story

On the site of an older sanctuary, a temple was built around -560 by Theodore of Samos, Chersiphron and Metagenes and financed by King Croesus of Lydia. Its colossal dimensions (137.74 m long and 71.74 m wide) and the richness of its decoration explain its mention in sixteen of the twenty-four lists of the Seven Wonders of the World that have come down to us. It was deliberately set on fire in -356 by Erostratus, who wanted to make himself famous by destroying the temple (according to Cicero in his treatise De divinatione, [ref. to be confirmed], this fire took place on the day of the birth of Alexander the Big). A second temple was built in the middle of the 4th century BC. AD on the same level. Théophraste wrote in Histoire des Plantes that the doors in his time were made of cypress wood, explaining in passing the quality of its conservation. The temple was looted and burned by the Goths in 263: “Respa, Veduc and Thuruar, chiefs of the Goths, took the boat and crossed the strait of Hellespont in Asia. There they destroyed many populous cities and burned down the renowned temple of Diana/Artemis at Ephesus.” This temple is also considered one of the first banking establishments in the world: “the sanctuary had its own finances and acted as a bank. It was inviolable and the right of asylum was granted to those who placed themselves under its protection”. The ruins of Ephesus are today in the southwestern part of the Turkish city of Selçuk, fifty kilometers south of Izmir.

Location

The sacred site of Ephesus is much older than the Artemision. Pausanias the Periegete10 described, in the 2nd century BC. AD, the sanctuary of Artemis as very old. He asserts with certainty that it is much earlier than the time of the Ionic immigration in the region of Ephesus, and even older than the sanctuary of the oracle of Apollo at Didyma. He says that the pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Eleges and Lydians. This version is confirmed in 1908 by excavations carried out by D.G. Hogarth which made it possible to identify three successive temples built on the same site as the temple of Artemis in Ephesus. Second excavations in 1987-1988 also confirmed Pausianas' version of the story preceding the construction of the temple at Ephesus. Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis, attributes the origin of the temenos of Ephesus to the Amazons, of whom he already imagines a cult centered on an icon (Bretas)

Temple ruins

Source: en.wikipedia.org