In the Levant / Twenty Fifth Impression

by Charles Dudley Warner

It is as difficult to make real now upon this spot those fierce theologic wars of Ephesus, as it is the fabled exploits of Bacchus and Hercules and the Amazons in this valley; to believe that here were born Apollo and Diana, and that hither fled Latona, and that great Pan lurked in its groves.

We presently came upon the site of the great Temple of Diana, recently identified by Mr. Wood. We encountered on our way a cluster of stone huts, wretched habitations of the only representatives of the renowned capital. Before us was a plain broken by small hillocks and mounds, and strewn with cut and fractured stone. The site of the temple can be briefly and accurately described as a rectangular excavation, perhaps one hundred and fifty feet wide by three hundred long and twelve feet deep, with two feet of water in it, out of which rises a stump of a column of granite and another of marble, and two bases of marble. Round this hole are heaps of fractured stone and marble. In this excavation Mr. Wood found the statue of Diana, which we may hope is the ancient sacred image, guarded by the priests as the most precious treasure of the temple, and imposed upon the credulity of men as heaven-descended. This is all that remains of one of the Seven Wonders of the world,—a temple whose fame is second to none in antiquity; a temple seven times burned and eight times built, and always with increased magnificence; a temple whose origin, referable doubtless to the Cyclopean builders of this coast, cannot be less than fifteen hundred years before our era; a temple which still had its votaries and its rites in the fourth century. We picked up a bit of marble from its ruins, as a help-both to memory and imagination, but we went our way utterly unable to conceive that there ever existed any such person as great Diana of the Ephesians.

We directed our steps over the bramble-grown plain to the hill Pion. I suppose Pion may have been the acropolis of Ephesus, the spot of the earliest settlement, and on it and around it clustered many of the temples and public buildings. The reader will recall Argos, and Athens, and Corinth, and a dozen other cities of antiquity, for which nature furnished in the midst of a plain such a convenient and easily defended hill-fortress. On our way thither we walked amid mounds that form a street of tombs; many of the sarcophagi are still in place, and little injured; but we explore the weed-hid ground with caution, for it is full of pitfalls.

North of the hill Pion is a low green valley, encircled with hills, and in the face of one of its ledges, accessible only by a ladder, we were pointed out the cave of the Seven Sleepers. This favorite myth, which our patriotism has transferred to the highlands of the Hudson in a modified shape, took its most popular form in the legend of the Seven Sleepers, and this grotto at Ephesus was for many centuries the object of Christian and Moslem pilgrimage. The Christian legend, that in the time of the persecution of Diocletian seven young men escaped to this cave and slept there two centuries, and awoke to find Christianity the religion of the empire, was adopted and embellished by Mohammed. In his version, the wise dog Ketmehr, or Al Rakiin as the Koran names him, becomes an important character.

“When the young men,” says Abd-el-Atti, “go along the side of the hill to the cave, the dog go to follow them. They take up stones to make him go back, for they 'fraid of him bark, and let the people know where they hide. But the dog not to go back, he sit down on him hind, and him look berry wise. By and by he speak, he say the name of God.

“'How did you know that?' ask him the young men.

“'I know it,' the dog say, 'before you born!'

“Then they see the dog he wise by Allah, and know great deal, and let him to go with 'em. This dog, Ketmehr, he is gone, so our Prophet say, to be in Paradise; no other dog be there. So I hope.”

The names of the Seven Sleepers and Ketmehr are in great talismanic repute throughout the East; they are engraved upon swords and upon gold and precious stones, and in Smyrna you may buy these charms against evil.

Keeping round the hill Pion, we reached the ruins of the gymnasium, heaps of stone amid brick arches, the remains of an enormous building; near it is the north gate of the city, a fine marble structure, now almost buried. Still circling Pion we found ourselves in a narrow valley, on the other side of which was the long ridge of Conessus, which runs southward towards the sea. Conessus seems to have been the burial-place of the old town. This narrow valley is stuffed with remains of splendid buildings, of which nothing is now to be seen but heaps of fine marble, walls, capitals, columns, in prodigal waste. We stopped to admire a bit of carving, or to notice a Greek inscription, and passed on to the Stadium, to the Little Theatre, to the tomb of St. Luke. On one of the lintels of the entrance of this tomb, in white marble, as fresh as if carved yesterday, is a cross, and under it the figure of an Egyptian ox, the emblem of that saint.