Over the centuries, the Temple of Artemis was affected by the influence of various cultures,
conquerors and religious traditions. Watch to find out how it went from wonder of the world to ruin.
You're probably at least a little bit familiar with the Greek goddess Artemis.
She's the virgin goddess of the hunt, forests, animals, and the like — and
that's generally what most people probably think of when the name Artemis comes up.
So it would make sense that this is a temple to that goddess.
Strangely enough, though, that's not really true. Or, at least, not entirely. Even though
it was founded by the Greeks, the temple's home of Ephesus was located in Asia Minor, in what
is now modern-day Turkey. Being where it was, Ephesus saw its fair share of Eastern influence
seeping in and mixing with the Greek, creating a very different version of the god Artemis.
Unlike in classical Greek mythology, the Ephesians believed both Artemis and Apollo to have been born
in a grove called Ortygia. Finding a place near their city with that same name, they claimed it
to be the birthplace of the two gods, proving a marked contrast to Greek myth, which claims
Delos was their birthplace. The Ephesians also associated Artemis with fertility, depicting
her in statues with eggs or breasts covering her torso, and her legs held tightly together
by a fitted skirt. There's a chance that, in Ephesus, Artemis was conflated with another local
goddess of fertility, named Cybele — which would explain where these changes might have come from.
"I dunno, it's all Greek to me."
"Oh, you speak Greek?"
"No, I mean it sounds like Greek."
"Well, if it sounds like Greek, it probably is Greek."
If you were to look up pictures of the Temple of Artemis, you might find something that looks like
pretty much every other classical Greek temple. You know the deal: white marble,
exquisite columns, carvings of mythological heroes — it's basically a smaller Parthenon.
But the Temple of Artemis might originally have looked pretty different. Legend has it that,
before the building of the more magnificent Temple of Artemis in the 6th century B.C.,
another temple stood in the same area. Unfortunately,
there isn't much information out there about this predecessor. It's hard to say when it was built,
either, but it might have been destroyed by a flood in around the 7th century B.C.
It has also been suggested that this temple could have been some kind of Bronze Age religious site,
constructed before the wave of Ionian immigration that led to the construction of the newer temple.
If nothing else, the Ephesians seemed to believe that there had been some sort of temple there
previously. Stories say that they would tie long ropes from the old temple site to their city,
hoping that Artemis would witness their dedication to her and protect them in times of war.
The Amazons were a mythical group made up of warrior women,
said to be descended from the Greek god of war, Ares. According to the canon of Greek mythology,
they were the ones who founded the original Temple of Artemis. The when is a little hazy;
some accounts suggest it was established by their first queen, Otrera, while others claim
that it was completed around the time that they had their infamous confrontation with Theseus.
Either way, the Amazons would apparently worship Artemis at this temple, making
music and dancing while wearing their armor and weapons. Aside from worship,
the Amazons were also said to have used the temple as a sanctuary on at least a couple occasions.
As one story goes, one of those occasions was one on which the god of wine, Dionysus,
overwhelmed and killed many of them in a battle. Another story has them fleeing to the temple
after being attacked by Heracles in his attempt to retrieve the girdle of the Amazon queen Hippolyta.
The funds for the more famous Temple of Artemis came from the Lydian king Croesus,
who managed to conquer Ephesus somewhere between 550 and 560 B.C. His name was even
found on a piece of a column in the temple, saying that it was "dedicated by Croesus".
Construction on the temple soon got underway, overseen by the architect Chersiphron.
It would be a long time before the temple was completed — 120 years,
in fact — but the finished project was an architectural marvel. The first to be made
entirely out of marble, the Temple of Artemis was massive, dwarfing the famous Athenian
Parthenon at 425 feet long and 225 feet wide and lined by 127 intricately carved columns.
Aside from the aesthetic beauty of the temple,
much thought was also put into the engineering of the building. Its foundations were laid in
a marshy area and constructed using layers of charcoal and sheepskin,
which helped protect the temple from earthquakes and support its massive weight.
They say that all press is good press — and perhaps nobody embodies that belief
more than the man who burned down the Temple of Artemis.
On July 21st, 356 B.C., a man by the name of Herostratus entered the Temple of Artemis
and set it on fire. By the next morning, the whole thing had been reduced to charred rubble.
Herostratus didn't even try to flee, allowing himself to be captured and later tortured.
Unfortunately, Herostratus' upbringing is still a mystery to this day — he might have been a
low-born Ephesian or a slave, but that's all anyone can guess. He is solely known for this
act of arson… which is exactly what he wanted. Herostratus admitted under torture that he had
burned down the temple just to be known as the guy who destroyed the Temple of Artemis.
For that, the Ephesians executed him and banned his name from ever being mentioned.
Unfortunately for them, however, Herostratus' name has lived on. Historians such as Strabo
and Theopompus named him specifically as the arsonist, and he's lived on in infamy ever since.
"Conquer your fear, and I promise you, you will conquer death!"
On the surface, it would seem like the only major connection between the Temple of
Artemis and Alexander the Great is that they both vaguely have something to do with ancient Greece.
In truth, however, the connection goes quite a bit deeper than that.
And it all starts with dates — specifically, with July 21st, 356 B.C.
That's the day that the Temple of Artemis burned down, but it's also the same day that Alexander
the Great was born. And so, fittingly, there's a legend to link the two events. The story goes that
the only reason the Temple of Artemis burned down was because Artemis herself wasn't home; she was
over in Macedonia, assisting with the birth of Alexander the Great. That said, not everyone in
Ephesus was so pleased with this interpretation. According to Plutarch, Hegesias of Magnesia
proposed the idea as a joke, but some of his peers saw the arson as a sign of calamity to come.
The connections don't quite end there,
though. Alexander himself arrived in Ephesus in 334 B.C. while the Temple was being rebuilt.
Seeing that, he offered to pay for all the expenses on the Temple, asking that
he be credited with an inscription in the final product. The Ephesians turned him down, though,
tactfully saying that it was "inappropriate for a god to dedicate offerings to gods."
The destruction of the Temple of Artemis in 356 B.C. was far from the end of its story.
Reconstruction of the temple began, paid for by the people of Ephesus,
who collected their own jewelry to provide the funds. This new, Hellenistic version
of the temple followed the same design as its predecessor, even if it was just a little smaller.
That said, with the original being as massive as it was, the new temple was still
pretty huge — worthy enough to be included on Herodotus' list of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Pilgrims travelled to the temple from all around the Mediterranean world,
and many wrote about their experiences of seeing it up close. Sometime around 140 B.C., Antipater
of Sidon was one of those pilgrims. Although he had already seen many of the other Wonders of
the Ancient World, he claimed that the Temple of Artemis overshadowed them all. Sidon wrote:
"Apart from Olympus, the sun has never looked upon aught so grand."
There really isn't a whole lot known about the origins of the Goths; as best as anyone can tell,
they may have originated up near Scandinavia before traveling south and having a series
of run-ins with the Roman Empire. The Romans referred to them as barbarians,
and the history between the two groups was contentious at best,
marked by raids and warfare spanning several centuries. And it was the Goths who sacked
Rome in 410 A.D., essentially sounding the death knell for the Western Roman Empire.
This tumultuous relationship with Rome is where Greece comes into the picture,
seeing as how, at the time, Greece was under the rule of the Romans.
"What have the Romans ever done for us?" "Brought peace?" "Oh, peace — shut up!"
The Goths began leading invasions into Greece during the middle of the 3rd century, only to
be met by Roman forces in battle. Eventually, Ephesus, which had become the capital of that
region under the Romans, was itself invaded. In that particular campaign, which took place
in 267 A.D., the Goths attacked and plundered the Temple of Artemis. Unfortunately, that wasn't the
end of the Temple's tribulations; in fact, things were about to get a whole lot worse.
As it turned out, it was the Christians who brought about
the final destruction of the Temple of Artemis.
Here's how it unfolded. During the Roman era, Greece was essentially absorbed into the Empire.
Centuries later, Roman mythology — which was itself pretty close to
its Greek counterpart — was supplanted by Christianity. The influence of Christ on
the Roman Empire became absolute in the late 4th century A.D., when the emperor Theodosius
I issued a decree condemning pagan practices. The Temple of Artemis was closed soon after.
Years later, various writings regarding the temple cropped up in Christian literature.
One story tells of the apostle John arriving at Ephesus, at which point the Temple of Artemis
falls into spontaneous ruin — the altar breaks apart, as do the images of the Greek gods,
and the roof itself caves in. Supposedly, Artemis left her temple and gave it to Christ,
the people seeing no purpose in worshipping her anymore.
As for the fate of the physical temple, we have John Chrysostom to thank for that.
An archbishop in Constantinople in the late 4th century,
Chrysostom is credited with the total destruction of the Temple of Artemis,
leading a Christian mob to destroy it in 401 A.D. Cyril of Alexandria later referred to
Chrysostom as "the destroyer of the demons and overthrower of the temple of Diana."
Taken altogether, the Temple of Artemis has a pretty storied history, having been destroyed,
sacked, and rebuilt so many times.
But, in the end, its grandeur and influence were left to peter out entirely. After the
attacks of the 3rd and 4th centuries, the temple was never fully restored;
instead, its ruins were repurposed into a quarry. This awe-inspiring temple became
part of a building project for a new Byzantine city in Ephesus.
There's a pretty decent chance that the temple building was essentially gutted for its parts.
It was a fairly common practice in Ephesus for parts of older buildings to be taken and
reused in the construction of newer buildings. Alternatively, its bricks might have been burned
for lime. A far more fun story, however, comes from the rumor that a few of its columns were
used in the construction of the Hagia Sophia — where those columns have stood for centuries after
the fall of the original temple. Unfortunately, there isn't much evidence supporting this theory.
As for the rest of the ruins, earthquakes did their number on the structure while
flooding buried much of the rest in silt. Only fragments were discovered years later,
which were eventually stacked into the composite column that is on display today.
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