27 - Artemis of the Ephesians

The walls of the Temple of Artemis rise between the double line of Ionic pillars that surround it like waves of the sea arrested in mid-motion and turned to red marble. The temple is four hundred and twenty feet long and two hundred and twenty feet wide. The double row of pillars on each side is sixty feet high. The wealth of Asia has been poured out to make this the greatest of all temples. It took two hundred years to build, and it’s one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

For generations, kings, nobles, and merchants of Asia Minor and Achaia have been sending gifts, so that they could have a part in the immortal building. One might send a pillar, another a statue, a third a priceless vessel. One of the mighty columns shows an image of the eternal love struggle between Aphrodite and Mars, hammered out by the great Scopas. On another column the Graces dance in everlasting beauty, their light feet swimming on weightless air. They pursue each other in a circle, the pursuer pursued but never catching and never caught. For this dance is the flight and pursuit of time, which flies but never escapes, pursues but never catches. On a third column Mercury is poised at the moment of his departure on a mission from Zeus.

What a hymn of beauty sings in the marble! Glory upon glory, song upon song, the pillars and sculptures of the Temple of Artemis are a tribute to her who reigns within.

The temple stands in a flat valley where a great swamp used to be. But the swamp was drained and now a vast series of gardens and meadows has replaced a miasmal scum. Because of the low ground level, the temple stands on a platform and is reached by wide stairs between rows of columns.

The goddess herself is in the great inner hall of the temple. She is adorned by groups of amazons, the work of the foremost sculptors of the Greek world. Scopas, Polikletes, the immortal Phidias, and his peer Praxiteles, poured their souls into the gigantic maidens who fill the inner hall. Only such mortals whose eyes the gods have kissed could see the human form in such gracious and yet stormy beauty. Womanly heads are poised on mighty throats with more than regal dignity. Wisdom and beauty pour down from broad foreheads. This is the very ecstasy of human praise.

Over here is the group hewn by Polikletes. These women are human, earthly, and motherly. He poured into these outlines all the love a man can give. Desire breathes from the rounded stone, blood flows in the marble veins, and milk uplifts the marble breast. Tender warmth is seen in the delicate traces of the robes.

At the feet of Artemis stand the women athletes of Praxiteles, who seem to cry out the greatness of the goddess in triumph. Although endowed with infinite power, these bronze figures subdue their power in humility, for in the presence of the goddess their strength becomes uncertainty; their tremendous mastery of the flesh fails.

And opposite the altar of the goddess stands the image of the young Alexander, King of Macedonia. Flush with triumph, he pauses at the feet of Artemis, under the sign of the greater triumphs that await him.

Surely the image of Artemis did not fall from heaven, as the legend says. It’s more likely that the countless, powerful images of men and women crowding the inner hall were sent by Apollo to accompany the goddess in a deliberate descent. No accident brought about this concourse of immortal figures or adorned the walls with such paintings, such trophies of war, such spears and breastplates and swords.

The goddess’ body is draped in a veil of Persian silk and guarded by a double row of pillars. A marble altar stands before her, the sides of which were hammered out by Praxiteles. A gigantic cupola swims above her head, and no one knows how the gigantic hemisphere is suspended in midair.

A flight of wooden stairs, cut from a single tree, leads from the lower to the upper level of the hall where four balconies protrude from the outer wall on the square before the temple. The eunuch priests stand on these balconies and blow their silver trumpets, thus proclaiming that the veil of silk is about to be lifted, and Artemis will become visible to her worshippers. Not that the common people will see her. They are all outside, prostrate in the dust. Only the great, princes, rulers, and nobles are allowed inside.

Now the great cypress gates of the temple swing open. The masses from every part of Asia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Macedonia, and Achaia press between the columns. There are healthy and sick, cripples on their crutches, blind led by children, and the paralyzed carried on their litters. All wait for the moment when the unveiling of the goddess will be proclaimed.

A long blast on the trumpets, a quick rolling of the drums, and then an interval of silence. A cloud of incense blows across the square. The worshippers lie prostrate and breathless both inside and outside the hall. The veil of silk is slowly withdrawn. Artemis of Ephesus, the goddess Apollo sent down from heaven, stands on her pedestal of black marble, encircled with mystic hieroglyphics that no one can read. All the beauty that human genius can express in stone and color is grouped all around her.

But she herself is grossly ugly.

Her body is made of black ebony and ugly vine-wood. Her upper body is covered with metal breasts, symbols of fruitfulness. Her lower body is fitted into a metallic frame on which are hammered countless heads of lions. Her nose is flat, Asian. Her eyes are dull, her mouth contorted. Black as charcoal, repulsive as a reptile, she stands there, an Asian horror!

But when she is unveiled, a shuddering cry spreads from the hall to the façade to the open square, to the thousands upon thousands of prostrate worshippers.

“Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

Horrible and mystic, loathsome and powerful, she spreads awe and bewilderment around her.

The cry is heard in a dozen languages and a score of dialects. The curt accents of the Greeks, the nasal, long-drawn utterance of the Asians, the babbling of the Phoenicians, all mix with local accents. With eyes shut tight, lips taut, and foreheads drawn close, an ecstasy of hope and fear grips the vast, motley crowd. And each one believes that this cry brings intimate union with the goddess.

When the sweet acrid fumes of the billows of incense reach the crowd outside, their cries of ecstasy increase. There is a stampede toward the temple doors, blind, lame, and sick calling on their last energies, crawling or pushing their way toward the unseen goddess, clawing at each other, and screaming supplications. Wild voices can be heard.

“Look, that lame man walks! Look there, that sick man got off his bed!”

A group of priests begins gathering up thrown away crutches. These will hang as trophies on the walls of the temple, tributes to the greatness of Artemis.

After the priests come a horde of magicians, tattooed from head to foot with mystic symbols. They thread their way among the worshippers, selling their philters, herbs, and talismans. Soothsayers and astrologers offer horoscopes for sale. Tiny models of the temple and of the goddess’ image are also sold. Some of these are of costly metal, and come from the workshop of Demetrius, the First Silversmith. Models of the goddess are a protection against the evil eye.

Thus a wave of deceit, greed, and corruption bathes the assembled crowd. When things calm down, the flute players and mimes have their turn. Women possessed of spirits come out to tell fortunes, while peddlers offer little scrolls in which the secret names of the goddess are supposedly written and bards tell stories and ballads of their own composition.


After the worship hour, the people scatter into the gardens and meadows. The sun is setting, and an azure, dewy light, shot through with streaks of crimson cloud, spreads over the place. Here and there a group of people takes up the chorus of a song. Lines of dancing girls with flower wreaths on their heads pass among them to the accompaniment of flutes and bells. Young boys and girls dance along, hand in hand, lifting their robes in rhythm with the music. A crowd is gathered around a naked athlete who makes skillful play with his muscles as he sways his body left and right. Somewhere a shrill cry of laughter is heard from a group of women. A eunuch is complaining that the magic of the priests has failed to restore his virility.

The air is filled with the smell of roasting meat. Cartloads of slaughtered oxen, swine, sheep and goats had been brought out by the priests to sell to the cooks who in turn are preparing the meat to sell to the worshippers. The wine dealers have set up their booths. A thousand lanterns and torches star the gathering darkness, and a spirit of recklessness, gaiety, and lust takes hold of the vast throng. Couples wander away from their companions and seek out the shadowy places under the bushes.

It is against this abomination that Paul will lift the ax just as Abraham lifted it against the idols of his father Terah.

* * * * *

There was a Gentile from one of the oldest and most celebrated families in Ephesus by the name of Trophimus who’d inherited a great collection of idols, the work of many masters. As far back as family records went, these demons and images had been the protectors of the house, and countless generations had worshipped and sacrificed before them. After listening to Paul, Trophimus accepted the faith and was baptized. Habit and tradition being as strong as they were, though, he couldn’t bring himself to abandon his heritage. So he and his household continued to pray to the ancient powers, for he was afraid that if he stopped, his ancestors would return from the other world and take vengeance on him.

When Paul demanded that he give up the gods he kept in the family grotto, and burn all the mystic books of the priests, Trophimus argued that Paul’s faith had no tangible, visible symbol, something to see and touch. An all-present, all-filling, universal, invisible God, and a Christ who had died for him was an abstraction. Steeped in the timeless habit of material presences, Trophimus couldn’t put his trust in the invisible. He needed an image to look at and to possess.

But Paul was patient as he taught him that the very first article of the new faith was utter belief in the invisible God. Without seeing him, the believer must know that his prayer is heard. Indeed, it is known even before it is said. God knows the secret thoughts and the needs of all men, and every hair on the head of a man is counted.

“And God demands,” said Paul, “that you accept Him blindly, and place your life in His hands. And even when the waters overwhelm you and you think there can be no help, still you must believe that God will help you. And then he surely will.”

Paul taught Trophimus about when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and brought them to the shore of the Red Sea. Pharaoh’s chariots were behind them, and the angry stormy waters were in front of them. And when Moses issued the command for the people to go forward, it was only after they gathered up their faith and plunged into the roaring waters that the waters were suddenly quieted and two walls were reared up. Between these two frozen walls the children of Israel passed in safety to the other shore.

“So it is with every believer,” said Paul. “Every believer must pass through the Red Sea, knowing that God will be with him. Therefore, Trophimus, throw out the idols and demons you’ve trusted in and destroy them. When God sees that faith, he’ll bring you into the faith of Christ.”

And Trophimus saw the light. In pain and trembling with fear, but with a faith stronger than both, he took the gods of his fathers, broke them into fragments, and brought them to Paul to be burned.

This caused a revival with many other worshippers of the goddess of Ephesus.

One day soon after this, at the same time that thousands of Artemis worshippers were assembled in front of the temple of the goddess, Paul assembled the believers in one of the Jewish courtyards, not to worship Artemis, but to destroy her images. The new believers brought books by the soothsayers and the interpreters of dreams, books with special and mysterious invocations to the goddess. They brought all kinds of magic instruments, locks of hair from famous witches, costly things that promised to bring back fruitfulness to the barren or to drive off the evil eye. There were scrolls containing horoscopes, phials containing philters, roots and herbs and dried plants, recipes of Appolonius. All these, together with the sacred images, the models of the temple, and of Artemis, in stone, silver, gold and other metals, were brought to Paul.

And most precious of all, they brought amulets made up of the bones of their dead loved ones, which they wore around their necks. A great heap was gathered for destruction in the Jewish quarter. At the same time that the flames of sacrifice went up in the inner temple of Artemis, flames were also kindled on the heap. The amulets caught fire, the scrolls crackled, and the images melted. And still the believers came and cast their abominations into the fire. A world was being destroyed, the world of paganism, going up in crimson sheets and a myriad of sparks.

As Paul stood there, illumined by the flames, it suddenly seemed to him that a man drew near to him, the same man he’d seen in a vision in Troas, the man of Macedonia. He stood before Paul, and his shining eyes were open, as if seeking an answer to a question.

“Paul! You destroy the beauty of Hellas!”

“Not the beauty of Hellas,” answered Paul, “but the idolatry of Hellas. The beauty of Hellas has been inherited by Christ, who has also inherited something greater than the beauty of Hellas, the man of Hellas.”

After answering, Paul looked around him, and the man had vanished. There were only believers, flames and the triumph of purification. He heard only the crackling of the fire and the lamentation of the dying goods. He’d just been talking to himself.

Or maybe not.