This city is not only celebrated in profane history, which ascribes its foundation to the Amazons, but is rendered interesting to mankind, for being commemorated in the Sacred Scriptures by many important recollections. When Christianity began to expand itself in Asia, seven churches were founded, eminently distinguished among the early Christians, as fountains, whence the light of the gospel should flow upon a benighted world. The first and chief of these was the great city of Ephesus. When St. John in his Apocalypse addresses these seven churches, the first he named was that of Ephesus. To the professors of Christianity there, he gives a high character, intimating the reformation which the infant gospel had already effected among the Gentiles. “I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear those that are evil.” To this church, St. Paul addressed his epistle when in bonds at Rome, to guard them against that false doctrine that was even then beginning to taint the purity of the gospel. This city he visited in his travels, and adds the testimony of sacred history to that of profane, to the estimation in which the great heathen temple was held; and from this city he took his final departure at that affecting moment, when they kneeled down, and prayed on the sea-shore, “and wept sore for the words which he spake−that they should see his face no more.” This city once had a bishop, the angel of the church, Timothy, the beloved disciple of St. John; and tradition reports that it was honoured with the last days of both these great men, and of the Mother of our Lord.
The present state of this “light of Asia,” this “emporium of the world,” forms a sad and striking contrast to its former splendour. The traveller lands on a dismal swamp at the mouth of a river, choked up with sand. Beside this is an extensive jungle of low bushes, the retreat of wolves and jackals, and all the wild animals whose solitary and predatory habits lead them to those haunts, which had once been, but are no longer, the habitations of men. From thence he advances up an extensive and fertile plain, through which the Caÿster winds, exhibiting all the capabilities of culture and abundance, but now a rank marsh, scattered over with muddy pools, the retreat of flocks of aquatic fowls, among which are sometimes seen flights of swans, indicating the permanent character of nature still remaining unchanged, though the habits of man are altered. At some miles from the sea are marble columns, supposed to have formed part of the quay when the river was navigable, and Ephesus the great mart of Asia. Beyond, the plain is skirted by a rising ground, on which appears a succession of ruins for several miles, including a stadium in a more perfect state than the rest; but by far the most interesting are the remains of the temple and the amphitheatre.
On the side of the hill, and partly excavated from it, is a section of a great amphitheatre: the seats have been destroyed or removed, but part of the marble front, many bas-reliefs, and sculptured fragments, attest its primitive splendour. This magnificent area for representing the spectacles of the ancients, gives a high idea of the wealth and population of the city to which it belonged, and the number of spectators it was necessary to accommodate. Immediately below are the supposed ruins of the Artemision, or Temple of Diana, of which Ctesiphon was the chief architect; it was one of the seven wonders of the world: it measured 425 feet in length, 200 in breadth; was adorned with 127 columns, each the gift of a king; occupied 220 years in building; and was eight times reduced to ruins. Its foundations were laid in a swamp, as Pliny says, to guard against the effects of an earthquake. To absorb the damp, wool and charcoal were interspersed, and the arches form a subterranean labyrinth, in which the waters now stagnate. The walls are formed of immense blocks of marble, the faces of which are perforated with cavities; into these were sunk the shanks of the brass and silver plates with which the temple was faced, but they have been long since abstracted. In front are the remains of vast porphyry pillars, which probably formed the portico of the temple. When Constantine the Great issued his decree against heathen worship, this the principal of its temples was finally destroyed, and some of its pillars removed to Constantinople, to adorn the Christian church of the “holy and eternal freedom of God.”—So celebrated was this magnificent pile, that Herostratus, a philosopher, conceived the extraordinary idea of rendering himself immortal by destroying it. He set it on fire on the night Alexander the Great was born, when, as the mythologists say, the goddess to whom it belonged was so engaged in one of her functions at this important birth, that she neglected the care of her temple, and the splendid fabric was burnt to the ground. To defeat the hopes of this incendiary, a decree was issued, rendering it penal to pronounce his name, but this only contributed to preserve it the more.
The vicinity of this ruin to the amphitheatre is an additional and deeply interesting reason for supposing it to be what remains of the ancient temple of Diana. Here was the place where St. Paul excited the disturbance among the silver and brass smiths who worked for the temple; and opposite was the great public resort, where the people were assembling for the exhibition of spectacles, into which they rushed, carrying with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s companions. Here they had a full view of the magnificent front of the temple “which all Asia worshipped,” and in their enthusiasm they cried out, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”
Passing these ruins, the traveller arrives at Aiasaluk, situated on a hill near the upper extremity of the valley. Beside it is the ancient aqueduct which conveyed water to the great city; and near it a church, supposed to be that of St. John, rebuilt by the emperor Justinian, but now converted into a Turkish mosque. All that remains of the habitations of the living is now contained in this Turkish village, whose name still reminds him of its former Christian population. Aiasaluk is a corruption of Ayas Theologos,11 the name by which the Greeks denominate St. John, to whom the neighbouring church was dedicated.
Such is the brief account of the great and interesting city of Ephesus! Its “candlestick has been removed,” as the prophet predicted. All that remains of the Gentile population are, one hundred Turks, enclosed within narrow limits on the summit of a hill; and its numerous Christian congregation is reduced to two individuals, one a Greek gardener, and the other the keeper of a coffee-house,—and these are the representatives of the first great church of the Apocalypse!
The Illustration represents these objects. On the right, in front, are the remains of the theatre, ascending the side of the hill; and before it, extensive ruins are scattered over the surface. Other fragments of edifices are strewed about, and beyond is the humid plain of the Caÿster. In the back ground are the hills which terminate the plain; and under them, on a lower eminence, the town of Aiasaluk, having below all that remains of the church of St. John, and the aqueduct, built by Herodes Atticus from the ruins of the great city.