Ephesus Audio Guide

Ancient Ephesus was a Greek city on the coast of Ionia, in what is now Turkey near the town of Selçuk. Attic and Ionian colonists founded it in the tenth century BC, on the site of Apasa, a capital of the Bronze Age kingdom of Arzawa. It joined the Ionian League, a fellowship of twelve Greek cities, and came under Roman control in 129 BC. Later it grew into one of the largest cities of Roman Asia Minor. By the fifteenth century it stood completely abandoned. What survives makes it one of the best-preserved classical cities of the Mediterranean, with marble streets, luxury houses, early Christian sites, and a theatre that held about twenty-four thousand people. The ruins here belong to a vast bath-gymnasium complex of the second century AD, raised near the Magnesian Gate at the city's eastern entrance. Arriving travellers bathed, exercised and studied here before going in, because in Roman times the gymnasium was the school. The ruins run downhill from this upper gate, and their arches still rise above the scrub-covered hillside.

José Luiz · CC BY-SA 3.0

These brick arches and vaults belonged to the bathhouse by the State Agora, known today as the Baths of Varius, which served Ephesus's civic centre. Roman baths were feats of engineering. A wood furnace sent hot gases through the empty space beneath the floors, a system called the hypocaust, and the heat rose into the rooms above. Bathers moved from cold rooms to warm ones to the hot rooms, and back again. The layered brick arches carried the heavy floors and vaults over those heating channels. Bathing was a daily civic routine, and for the officials and administrators who worked around the agora, this was their bathhouse. The arches visible here are the skeleton of that machinery, stripped of its floors.

José Luiz · CC BY-SA 3.0

In 27 BC the emperor Augustus made Ephesus the capital of the province of proconsular Asia, taking the honour from Pergamum. The city became the seat of the governor of western Asia Minor. The geographer Strabo wrote that Ephesus was second in importance and size only to Rome. This broad open square, framed by colonnaded halls, was where that power sat. Provincial administration was conducted here, the cult of the emperor was honoured here, and courts held their trials within sight of these stoas. The city governed itself as well, through its own council, which met close by in a small roofed theatre.

Daniel VILLAFRUELA. · CC BY-SA 3.0

The carved bull heads belong to the Basilica Stoa, the portico along the north side of the State Agora. Each capital carries a sculpted bull's head, with the volutes of an Ionic capital curling above it. Shaping a heavy block of stone into horns, ears and muzzle took real skill, and it was spent on architectural ornament. In the imperial building programme, even the columns holding up a walkway were dressed as sculpture.

Klaus Walter · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

The Basilica Stoa itself was a covered portico about a hundred and sixty metres long. Its double row of columns created a wide, shaded hall where citizens could do business out of the sun and rain. Buildings like this did not come from public budgets alone. Wealthy Ephesians paid for monumental architecture as a gift to the city, and their names went up on the stone in return. Under Roman peace, that competition in generosity turned Ephesus into a city of marble. The bull-head capitals you have just seen were among the finest ornament on the portico.

Photo: Rita1234 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Publius Vedius Antoninus and his wife built this small roofed theatre around 150 AD. It seated about fifteen hundred people on twenty-two stepped tiers around a semicircular floor, with entrances at both sides. The city's senate, the boule, met here, and the same room hosted concerts and poetry readings. Government and culture shared one building, and red granite pillars decorated the upper gallery. The city's Great Theatre held many thousands more, but that was for the whole populace. The council's business needed a room, not an arena.

Photo: Mykenik~commonswiki · Public domain

Two tall columns rise again over the ruins of the Prytaneion, Ephesus's town hall. Inside burned the sacred hearth of Hestia, goddess of the hearth, and the flame was never allowed to go out. As long as it burned, the city itself was seen as alive. The prytaneis, the magistrates who handled the city's daily business, were responsible for keeping it fed. The building's chief officer acted much like a mayor, and his first duty was that flame. Statues of gods and emperors lined the hall, and the great marble statues of Artemis now in the Ephesus museum were found here. Adjoining buildings housed the city's official guests.

M. Steskal · CC BY-SA 3.0

This monument honoured Gaius Memmius, grandson of the dictator Sulla, and through him the Roman takeover of Ephesus. The city had come under Roman control in 129 BC. In 88 BC Ephesus welcomed the forces of Mithridates, king of Pontus, as he drove the Romans out of the province. From Ephesus, Mithridates ordered the killing of Roman citizens across Asia; some eighty thousand died, and statues of Roman residents were destroyed too. When Sulla defeated Mithridates in 86 BC, Ephesus returned to Roman rule under a heavy indemnity and years of back taxes. The monument on this spot celebrated the family that stood for the reconquest, and advertised the connection to every passer-by.

Ratomir Wilkowski RODZIMOWIERCA.PL · CC BY 3.0

A winged woman sweeps forward in carved marble, wreath in one hand, palm branch in the other. She is Nike, goddess of victory. The relief was never a free-standing statue; it worked as a corner bracket on the Hercules Gate, its shape cut to fit where two blocks met. Even a structural bracket on a city gate could carry the image of victory.

Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan · CC BY-SA 2.0

Two pillars carved with Hercules wearing the skin of the Nemean lion stand facing each other across Curetes Street. Between them, the fourth-century gate they supported narrowed the passage. That pinch was the point: wheeled vehicles could not force through, so the street beyond became pedestrian-only. The upper city around the State Agora was reserved for people on foot, and this gate drew the line. Hercules, the hero of strength, stood guard on both sides.

Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan · CC BY-SA 2.0