The life and work of St. Paul

PATTL AT EPHESUS. 355
were rich with fish ; its air was salubrious ; its position unrivalled ; its population
multifarious and immense. Its markets, glittering with the produce of
the world's art, were the Vanity Fair of Asia. They furnished to the exile of
Patmos the local colouring of those pages of the Apocalypse in which ho speaks
of " the merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of psarls,
and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyme wood, and all
manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of
brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointment and
frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, aud
sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men" l
And Ephesus was no less famous than it was vast and wealthy. Perhaps
no region of the world has been the scene of so many memorable events in
ancient history as the shores of Asia Minor. The whole coast was in all
respects the home of the best Hellenic culture, and Herodotus declares that it
2
was the finest site for cities in the world of his clay. It was from Lesbos, and
Smyrna, and Ephesus, and Halicarnassus that lyric poetry, and epic poetry,
and philosophy, and history took their rise, nor was any name more splendidly
emblazoned in the annals of human culture than that of the great capital of
Ionia. 3
It was here that Anacreon had sung the light songs which so
thoroughly suited the soft temperament of the Greek colonists in that luxurious
air ; here that Mimnermos had written his elegies here ; that Thales had given
the first impulse to philosophy ;
here that Anaximander and Anaximenes had
learnt to interest themselves in those cosmogonic theories which shocked the
simple beliefs of the Athenian burghers ; here that the deepest of all Greek
thinkers, " Heracleitus the Dark," had meditated on those truths which he
uttered in language of such incomparable force ;
here that his friend Hermo-
dorus had paid the penalty of virtue by being exiled from a city which felt
that its vices were rebuked by his mere silent presence ;
* here that Hipponax
had infused into his satire such deadly venom ;
6 here that Parrhasius and
Apelles had studied their immortal art. And it was still essentially a Greek
city. It was true that since Attalus, King of Pergamos, nearly two hundred
years before, had made the Romans heirs to his kingdom, their power had
gradually extended itself in every direction, until they were absolute masters
of Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, Lydia, 6 and all the adjacent isles of Greece, and that
now the splendour of Ephesus was materially increased by its being the
residence of the Roman Proconsul. But while the presence of a few noble
Romans and their suites added to the gaiety and power of the city, it did not
affect the prevailing Hellenic cast of its civilisation, which was far more deeply
imbued with Oriental than with Western influences. The Ephesians crawled
at the feet of the Emperors, flattered them with abject servility, built temples
> Rev. xviii. 12, 13.
J
Hist. i. 142. For full accounts of Ephesus tee Guhl's Ephetiaca (Berl. 1843).
* See *
Hausrath, p. 339, teqq.
See Strabo, xiv., p. 612.
*
Cic. ad Fam. vii. 24.
*
Cio. pro Flacco 27 ; Plin. H. N. v. 28 ; ap. Hauirath, I.e.