Remains of Archaic Temple of Artemis at Ephesus

Abstract

When Mr. Wood in his patient and successful excavation of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus had got down to the natural soil, he observed a number of massive piers underneath the walls of the cella, or rather where the cella walls ought to have been. On the plan in his book he indicates these piers by dotted lines, supposing them to have been made to support the walls of a church built in late times after the temple had been destroyed. It may have been so. But there appears to be no other indication of such a church on the site. This much is certain, that in building these piers a free use had been made of the fragments lying at hand from the older temple which had been destroyed by fire on the night, as we are so often told, when Alexander was born. Fragments of the old frieze and cornice would build in like so many bricks, and give the piers that solidity which Mr. Wood could only break into, as he did reluctantly, by blasting. The result of the blasting was that he obtained a number of archaic fragments of sculpture and architecture which we have now to consider. That happened in 1874. Previously in 1872, he had found some fragments of the same archaic character, not built into piers but apparently loosely mixed with sculpture of a later age.