Ephesus > Ephesos Turkey

Ephesus is founded as an Attic-Ionian colony on the Ayasuluk Hill, three kilometers from the center of ancient Ephesus, in the tenth century BCE (as attested by excavations at the Seljuq castle during the 1990s).

The Ionian cities, together with the capital cities of the islands of Chios and Samos, include Phocaea, Erythrae, Clazomenae, Teos, Lebedus, Colophon, Ephesus, Priene, Myus, and Miletus on the mainland.

It is probable that the original number of towns of the tenth and ninth centuries was far larger.

There may be much truth in the tradition that identifies Athens as the departure point of the Ionians.

The Ionians receive only passing mention in Homer's epics but in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, roughly corresponding in time to the first certain written reference to the Ionians by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (reigned 704-681 BCE), they are noted as the great and wealthy people who frequent the festival of Apollo at Delos.

These Greek Ionian cities form an exclusive religious league, the Panionion, whose central shrine lies within the territory of Priene.

The cities of Ionia are pioneers of Greek civic (and probably constitutional) development in the eighth and seventh centuries.

They seem to have played little part in Greek maritime enterprise of the eighth century in the Mediterranean, but after 700 BCE, Ionic seamen of Phocaea and Miletus will become active in the Black Sea area and along the Mediterranean coasts of France and Spain, planting numerous colonies.

Miletus alone is said to have been the mother of ninety cities.

Among the Ionian cities, Miletus and  Ephesus (as the successor to Apasa, capital of the Luwian Late Bronze Age state of Arzawa) have by far the best claims to historical fame.

The Ionian cities have achieved great prosperity by the end of the seventh century BCE, through their trading enterprises, their colonization efforts, and their manufacture of ceramics, textiles, and metalware. (The date of the earliest coinage has been fairly securely fixed at about 600 BCE; the crucial discovery in 1951 will be the excavation and scientific examination of the foundation deposit of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Anatolia.)

Tyrants ruled the city of Ephesus for part of the early sixth century.

Though allied by marriage to the kings of Lydia, its people cannot hold back Croesus, who asserts a general suzerainty over the city.

He does, however, present many columns and some golden cows for a new and splendid rebuilding of the Artemisium (Temple of Artemis).

The first sanctuary (temenos) of Artemis in Ephesus, dating to the Bronze Age, antedated the Ionic immigration by many years.

Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis, attributed it to the Amazons.

A flood had destroyed the old temple in the seventh century.

Its reconstruction began around 560 BCE, under the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, at the expense of Croesus; the project takes ten years to complete.

The monumental Artemision, or Temple of Artemis, apparently inspired by the recently constructed temple of Hera at Samos, is reportedly the finest example of early Ionic architecture.

Supposedly the first Greek temple built of marble, its base measures three hundred and seventy-seven by one hundred and eighty feet (one hundred and fifteen by fifty-five meters), and the roofless, colonnaded interior houses a primitive statue of Artemis.

The columns of the porch feature reliefs of mythical characters and inscriptions recording donations by Croesus.

As the world’s largest and most complex temple, it becomes known as one of the seven wonders of the world.

The Ephesians begin to live in the plain at this time, according to Strabo; and to this period, too, should be allotted the redrafting of the laws, said to have been the work of an Athenian, Aristarchus.

The cities of Ionia, after Croesus' fall at the hands of Achaemenian Persia, are unable to effectively oppose the latter.

The subjugation of Ionia begun by Croesus enters its final phase in 546 BCE as Cyrus’s army sweeps along the coast of the Aegean Sea, adding Ephesos and the other Ionian towns formerly subject to Lydia to his Persian kingdom.

Most of the Ionian towns conquered by Cyrus revolt against the Persians, and have to be subdued.

Cyrus installs friendly tyrants in the rebellious Ionian towns, thus maintaining peace, and turns his attention to Babylonia.

Ephesus, early in the Ionian revolt (499 BCE-493 BCE) against the Persians, serves as a base for an Ionian attack on Sardis.

The Persians recapture all the truculent Ionian city-states except Miletus, the heart of the insurrection.

Heraclitus of Ephesus, who flourishes in the early fifth century BCE, introduces into philosophy a new self-consciousness about method and language, urging close attention to the polarities and concealed structures embodied in language.

Addressing the importance of self-exploration, he develops a new self-critical interest in the faculties used to gain knowledge.

He is the first Greek to develop a theory of the human soul, extolling its creative resources.

Displaying an interest in criteria of identity and unity, he makes his famous claim that an individual can and cannot step into the same river twice, because, even though all the river’s material constituents have in some way transformed, it is still, in a sense, the same river.

He declares fire to be the central element of the universe and holds the universe as being ruled by the logos, common to all. (Over on hundred of his enigmatic aphorisms survive in different sources, but his compressed and cryptic style has made interpretation difficult.)

Preoccupied with change, Heraclitus postulates a world with no beginning and no end.

Of the Ionian cities, Ephesus maintains friendly relations with Persia: in 478, Xerxes, returning from his failure in Greece, honors Artemis of Ephesus, although he sacks other Ionian shrines, and leaves his children for safety in Ephesus.

Heraclitus, a native of Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor, is known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe, and that the Logos is the fundamental order of all.

Heraclitus' life as a philosopher is interrupted by dropsy.

The physicians he consults are unable to prescribe a cure.

He treats himself with a liniment of cow manure and baking in the sun, believing that this method will remove the fluid.

He dies after a day of treatment and is interred in the marketplace.

His writings only survive in fragments quoted by other authors.