Rachel and the Seven Wonders

by Netta Syrett

“Now let me go on with the story.

“Again, as in the life he had lived about three hundred years before, he became, when he grew up, a most famous architect, and again, strangely enough, he built another temple to Diana. The temple you have just seen, famous throughout the world for its beauty, after standing about three hundred years, was set on fire one night by a madman, and burnt to the ground; just as the still earlier temple had been burnt.

“Two memorable things indeed happened on that night, for while the fire was raging in the temple just outside Ephesus, a baby was born, who lived to be the greatest conqueror in the world. His name was Alexander the Great—and Rachel has already heard something about him.

“But to return to the story. So great was the grief and horror of the people of Ephesus at the loss of their temple that they at once determined to set about another and still more magnificent one, greater and more splendid than any other in existence. And of this last temple—which became one of the Seven Wonders of the World—Dinocrates was appointed to be the architect.

“Now you might easily think that Dinocrates ought to have been the happiest man in the world to be allowed to build just the way he pleased, and with enormous riches at his disposal, a temple that should be worthy of the goddess he worshipped—the lovely Diana, the moonlight queen of the chase, the friend of children. And certainly, if this had been the Diana for whom he worked, he would have been happy indeed. But what kind of image do you think was to stand in the midst of the magnificent temple when at last it should be built? No statue of the graceful Diana he knew, with her short tunic blowing back in the breeze, and the crescent moon on her white forehead. The Diana now worshipped by the Ephesians was nothing but a monstrous black idol, scarcely like a woman at all! She was an enormous figure carved in ebony, with great towers upon her head, and a body hideously and grotesquely shaped!

“Hundreds and hundreds of years, you see, had passed since the true, lovely Diana had been worshipped under the trees or in early temples, and people had forgotten her—or rather they had perhaps confused the idea of her in their minds with other quite different goddesses belonging to Egypt. In any case, though they still kept her name, this was the Diana now adored by the Ephesians; this gigantic hideous idol which the people believed had fallen from heaven, sent down to them by Jupiter, the chief of all the gods! This ugly idol was the precious figure saved from the fire, for which Dinocrates was asked to build the most splendid temple in the world!

“Well, he built it. But all the time he was planning its long aisles of columns, its splendid entrance gates, its pavements, and lovely walls, it was of the long-ago, lovely Diana he was thinking, not of the hideous idol which had taken her place. And in his heart he built that temple to the Diana he had once known and loved, and could not imagine how he came to remember. Never, of course, did he speak of this strange memory, nor of his hatred for the hideous idol. He would never have dared to do so, for fear of what might happen to him if anyone knew how he hated and despised the image held sacred by the Ephesians.

“So he worked and planned, not for the honour of ‘Diana of the Ephesians’ but for the sake of a lovely memory, or dream perhaps, of something worth all his toil. And at last this Wonder of the World was finished. Kings with gifts of gold had helped to build it. The greatest king of all, Alexander the Great, had offered to spend his wealth upon it if only his name might be written on the building to last for ever. The greatest sculptors in Greece, and the greatest painters, had made statues and painted pictures to adorn the temple which covered the very same spot where once had stood the rough altar under the tree. But now the great building and numberless smaller ones connected with it, stretched over acres and acres of land beyond the little glade, and thousands of people belonging to the temple lived close to its walls. Priests, priestesses, men who composed hymns and chants to be sung in honour of the great idol, people who made copies of her shrine in silver (like the Demetrius in the Bible) all dwelt in the shadow of the huge temple of which in a moment you shall have a glimpse.

“But I will first finish the story of Dinocrates.

“After the temple was finished, he went on to fresh work, and became more and more famous as an architect.