in Ancient Geography, an old and celebrated city, capital of Ionia, and one of the twelve Ionian cities in Asia Minor in the mythic times. It was said to have been founded by the Amazons, to have been in later ages inhabited by the Carians and Leleges, and finally taken possession of by the Ionians, under Androclus, the son of Codrus. It lay on the river Cayster, not far from the coast of the Icarian sea, between Smyrna and Miletus. It was also one of the most considerable of the Greek cities in Asia Minor; but while, about the epoch of the introduction of Christianity, the other cities declined, Ephesus rose more and more. It owed its prosperity in part to the favour of its governors (for Lysimachus named the city Arsinoei, in honour of his second wife, and Attalus, Philadelphus furnished it with splendid wharfs and docks); in part to the favourable position of the place, which naturally made it the emporium of Asia on this side the Taurus (Strabo, xiv, pp. 641, 663). Under the Romans, Ephesus was the capital not only of Ionia, but of the entire province of Asia, and bore the honourable title of the first and greatest metropolis of Asia (Boeckh, Corp. Inscrip. Gr. 2968-2992). The bishop of Ephesus in later times was the president of the Asiatic dioceses, with the rights and privileges of a patriarch (Evagr. Hist. Eccl. iii. 6). In the days of Paul, Jews were found settled in the city in no inconsiderable number, and from them the apostle collected a Christian community; which, being fostered and extended by the hand of Paul himself, became the centre of Christianity in Asia Minor.

The classic celebrity of this city is chiefly owing to its famous temple, and the goddess in whose honour it was built, namely, "Diana of the Ephesians."

Around the image of the goddess was afterwards erected, according to Callimachus (Hymn. in Dian. 248), a large and splendid temple:

τὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ προσευχόμενον ἄγαλμα ἦν Οὐδὲ ἀνθρώπων ἢ δὲ κεφαλής παράλληλη.

This temple was burnt down on the night in which Alexander was born, by an obscure person of the name of Erosstratus, who thus sought to transmit his name to posterity; and, as it seemed somewhat unaccountable that the goddess should permit a place which redounded so much to her honour to be thus recklessly destroyed, it was given out that Diana was so engaged with Olympias, in aiding to bring Alexander into the world, that she had no time nor thought for any other concern. At a subsequent period, Alexander made an offer to rebuild the temple, provided he was allowed to inscribe his name on the front, which the Ephesians refused. Aided, however, by the whole of Asia Minor, they succeeded in erecting a still more magnificent temple, which the ancients have lavishly praised, and placed among the seven wonders of the world. It took 220 years to complete. Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 21), who has given a description of it, says it was 425 feet in length, 220 broad, and supported by 127 columns, each of which had been contributed by some prince and was 60 feet high; 36 of them were richly carved. Chersiphron, the architect, presided over the undertaking; and, being ready to lay violent hands on himself in consequence of his difficulties, was restrained by the command of the goddess, who appeared to him during the night, assuring him that she herself had accomplished that which had brought him to despair. The altar was the work of Praxiteles. The famous sculptor Scopas is said by Pliny to have chiselled one of the columns. Apelles, a native of the city, contributed a splendid picture of Alexander the Great. The rights of sanctuary, to the extent of a stadium in all directions round the temple, were also conceded; which, in consequence of abuse, the emperor Tiberius abolished. The temple was built of cedar, cypress, white marble, and even gold, with which it glittered (Spanh. Observat. in Hymn. in Dian. 353). Costly and magnificent offerings of various kinds were made to the goddess, and treasured in the temple; such as paintings, statues, &c., the value of which almost exceeded computation. The fame of the temple, of the goddess, and of the city itself, was spread not only through Asia, but the world; a celebrity which was enhanced and diffused the more readily because sacred games were practised there, which called competitors and spectators from every country. Among his other enormities, Nero is said to have despoiled the temple of Diana of much of its treasure; yet it continued to command no small portion of respect, till it was finally burnt by the Goths in the reign of Gallienus.

At Ephesus Diana was worshipped under the name of Artemis. There was more than one divinity that went by the name of Artemis—as the Arcadian Artemis, the Taurian Artemis, as well as the Ephesian Artemis. The Ephesian Artemis (see Artemis and Diana) differed materially from the Diana, sister of Apollo, whose attributes are the bow, the quiver, the girt-up robe, and the hound; whose person is a model of feminine strength, ease, and grace; and whose delights were in the pursuits of the chase—

Along the shady hills and breezy peaks Rejoicing in the chase, her golden bow She bends, her deadly arrows sending forth.

Among the distinguished natives of Ephesus in the ancient world, may be mentioned Apelles and Pardhasius, rivals in the art of painting; Heraclitus, the man-hating philosopher; Hipponax, a satirical poet; Artemidorus, who wrote a history and description of the earth. The claims of Ephesus, however, to the praise of originality in the prosecution of the liberal arts, are quite inconsiderable; and it must be content with the dubious reputation of having excelled in the refinements of a voluptuous and artificial civilization. With culture of this kind, a practical belief in, and a constant use of, those arts which pretend to lay open the secrets of nature and arm the hand of man with supernatural powers, have generally been found conjoined. Accordingly, the Ephesian multitude were addicted to sorcery; indeed, in the age of Christ and his apostles, adepts in the occult sciences were numerous; they travelled from country to country, and were found in great numbers in Asia, deceiving the credulous multitude and profiting by their expectations. They were sometimes Jews, who referred their skill and even their forms of proceeding to Solomon, who is still regarded in the East as head or prince of magicians (Joseph. Antiq. viii. 2, 5; Acts viii. 9; xiii. 6, 8). In Asia Minor Ephesus had a high reputation for magical arts (Ortlbb. De Ephes. Libris combustis).

The books mentioned Acts xix. 19 were doubtless books of magic. How much used and prized they were, may be learnt from the fact that "the price of them" was "fifty thousand pieces of silver." Very celebrated were the Ephesian letters, which appear to have been a sort of magical formulae, written on paper or parchment, designed to be fixed as amulets on different parts of the body, such as the hands and the head (Plut. Sym. vii.; Lakemacher, Obs. Philol. ii. Ephesus. 126; Deyling, Obserr. iii. 355). Erasmus (Adag. Cent. ii. 578) says that they were certain signs or marks which rendered their possessor victorious in everything. Eustathius (ad Hom. Odys. r. 694) states an opinion that Croesus, when on his funeral pile, was very much benefited by the use of them; and that when a Milesian and an Ephesian were wrestling in the Olympic games, the former could gain no advantage, as the latter had Ephesian letters bound round his heel; but these being discovered and removed, he lost his superiority and was thrown thirty times.

The ruins of Ephesus lie two short days' journey from Smyrna, in proceeding from which towards the south-east the traveller passes the pretty village of Sedekuy; and two hours and a half onwards he comes to the ruined village of Danizzi, on a wide, solitary, uncultivated plain, beyond which several burial-grounds may be observed; near one of these, on an eminence, are the sole remains of Ephesus, consisting of shattered walls, in which some pillars, architraves, and fragments of marble have been built. The soil of the plain appears rich. It is covered with a rank, burnt-up vegetation, and is everywhere deserted and solitary, though bordered by picturesque mountains. A few corn-fields are scattered along the site of the ancient city, which is marked by some large masses of shapeless ruins and stone walls. Towards the sea extends the ancient port, a pestilential marsh. Along the slope of the mountain and over the plain are scattered fragments of masonry and detached ruins, but nothing can now be fixed upon as the great temple of Diana. There are some broken columns and capitals of the Corinthian order of white marble; there are also ruins of a theatre, consisting of some circular seats and numerous arches—supposed to be the one in which Paul was preaching when interrupted by shouts of "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." The ruins of this theatre present a wreck of immense grandeur, and the original must have been of the largest and most imposing dimensions. Its form alone can now be spoken of, for every seat is removed, and the proscenium is a hill of ruins. A splendid circus (Fellows' Reports. p. 275) or stadium remains tolerably entire, and there are numerous piles of buildings seen alike at Pergamus and Troy as well as here—by some called gymnasia, by others temples; by others, again, with more propriety, palaces. They all came with the Roman conquest. No one but a Roman emperor could have conceived such structures. In Italy they have parallels in Adrian's villa near Tivoli, and perhaps in the pile upon the Palatine. Many other walls remain to show the extent of the buildings of the city, but no inscription or ornament is to be found, cities having been built out of this quarry of worked marble. The ruins of the adjoining town, which arose about four hundred years ago, are entirely composed of materials from Ephesus. There are a few huts within these ruins (about a mile and a half from Ephesus) which still retain the name of the parent city, Asatolok—a Turkish word which is associated with the same idea as Ephesus, meaning the city of the moon (Fellows). A church dedicated to St John is thought to have stood near, if not on the site of the present mosque. Arundell (Discoveries, vol. ii. p. 253) conjectures that the gate called the Gate of Persecution, and large masses of brick wall which lie beyond it, are parts of this celebrated church which was fortified during the great Council of Ephesus. The tomb of St John was in or under his church; and the Greeks have a tradition of a sacred dust arising every year, on his festival, from the tomb, possessed of miraculous virtues: this dust they term manna. Not far from the tomb of St John was that of Timothy. The tomb of Mary, the mother of our Lord, and the seven ἀγάπη (boys, as the Synaxaria calls the Seven Sleepers) are found in an adjoining hill. At the back of the mosque, on the hill, is the sunk ground-plan of a small church, still much venerated by the Greeks. The sites of two others are shown at Aslouk. There is also a building called the Prison of St Paul, constructed of large stones without cement.

Though Ephesus presents few traces of human life, and little but scattered and mutilated remains of its ancient grandeur, yet the environs—diversified as they are with hill and dale, and not scantily supplied with wood and water—present many features of great beauty. Arundell (ii. 244) enumerates a great variety of trees which he saw in the neighbourhood, among which may be specified groves of myrtle near Ephesus. He also found heath in abundance, of two varieties; and saw there the common fern, which he met with in no other part of Asia Minor.

Dr Chandler (p. 150, 4to) gives a striking description of Ephesus, as he found it on his visit in 1764:—"Its population consisted of a few Greek peasants, living in extreme wretchedness, dependence, and insensibility; the representatives of an illustrious people, and inhabiting the wreck of their greatness—some the substructure of the glorious edifices which they raised; some beneath the vaults of the stadium, once the crowded scene of their diversions; and some in the abrupt precipice, in the sepulchres which received their ashes. Such are the present citizens of Ephesus, and such is the condition to which that renowned city has been reduced. It was a ruinous place when the emperor Justinian filled Constantinople with its statues, and raised the church of St Sophia on its columns. Its streets are obscured and overgrown. A herd of goats was driven to it for shelter from the sun at noon, and a noisy flight of crows from the quarries seemed to insult its silence. We heard the partridge call in the area of the theatre and of the stadium. The pomp of its heathen worship is no longer remembered; and Christianity, which was then nursed by apostles, and fostered by general councils, barely lingers on, in an existence hardly visible." However much the church at Ephesus (Rev. ii. 2) may, in its earlier days, have merited praise for its "works, labour, and patience," yet it appears soon to have "left its first love," and to have received in vain the admonition—"Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent." If any repentance was produced by this solemn warning, its effects were not durable; and the place has long since offered an evidence of the truth of prophecy and the certainty of the divine threatenings, as well as a melancholy subject for thought to the contemplative Christian. Its fate is that of the once-flourishing seven churches of Asia; its fate is that of the entire country—a garden has become a desert. Busy centres of civilization, spots where the refinements and delights of the age were collected, are now a prey to silence, destruction, and death. Consecrated first of all to the purposes of idolatry, Ephesus next had Christian temples almost rivalling the pagan in splendour, wherein the image of the great Diana lay prostrate before the cross; and, after the lapse of some centuries, Jesus gives place to Mohammed, and the crescent glittered on the dome of the recently Christian church. A few more scores of years, and Ephesus has neither temple, cross, crescent, nor city; but is "a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness." Even the sea has retired from the scene of devastation, and a pestilential morass, covered with mud and rushes, has succeeded to the waters which brought up ships laden with merchandise from every part of the known world (Herod. i. 26, ii. 148; Liv. i. 45; Pausan. vii. 2, 4; Philo, Byz. de 7 Orb. Mira. Gronov. Thesaur. viii.; Creuzer, Symbol. ii. 13; Hasel, Erdbeschr. ii. 132; for a plan of Ephesus, see Kiepert Atlas, von Hellas; Arundell's Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia; Fellows' Excursion in Asia Minor, 1839; Discoveries in Asia Minor, by Rev. T. Arundell, 1834).