The life and work of St. Paul

358 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAXTL.
to their crime or their feebleness, deified them on their inscriptions and coins. 1
Even the poor simulacrum of the Senate came in for a share of their fulsome-
ness, and received its apotheosis from their complaisance. 2 The Romans,
seeing that they had nothing to fear from these degenerate lonians, helped
them with subsidies when they had suffered from earthquakes, flung them
titles of honour, which were in themselves a degradation, left them a nominal
autonomy, and let them live without interference the bacchanalian lives which
passed in a round of Paniouic, Ephesian, Arteniisian, and Lucullian games.
Such then was the city in which St. Paul found a sphere of work unlike any
in which he had hitherto laboured. It was more Hellenic than Antioch, more
Oriental than Corinth, more populous than Athens, more wealthy and more
refined than Thessalcnica, more sceptical and more superstitious than Ancyra
or Pessinus. It was, with the single exception of Rome, by far the most
important scene of all his toils, and was destined, in after-years, to become not
only the first of the Seven Churches of Asia, but the seat of one of those great
(Ecumenical Councils which defined the faith of the Christian world.
The character of the Ephesians was theu in very bad repute. Ephesus
was the head- quarters of many defunct superstitions, which owed their maintenance
to the self-interest of various priestly bodies. South of the city, and
brightened by the waters of the Cenchrius, was the olive and cypress grove of
Leto, 3 where the ancient olive-tree was still shown to which the goddess had
clung when she brought forth her glorious ''
4
twin-born progeny." Here was
the hill on which Hermes had proclaimed their birth ; here the Curetes, with
clashing spears and shields, had protected their infancy from wild beasts ;
here Apollo himself had taken refuge from the wrath of Zeus after he had
slain the Cyclopes ; here Bacchus had conquered and spared the Amazons
during his progress through the East. Such were the arguments wliioh the
Ephesian ambassadors had urged before the Roman Senate in arrest of a
determination to limit their rights of asylum. That right was mainly attached
to the great world-renowned Temple of Artemis, of which Ephesus gloried ia
calling herself the sacristan.8 Nor did they see that it was a right which was
ruinous to the morals and well-being of the city. Just as the mediaeval
Sanctuaries attracted all the scum and villainy, all the cheats and debtors and
murderers of the country round, and inevitably pauperised and degraded the
6
entire vicinity just as the squalor of the lower purlieus of Westminster to
this is
clay accounted for by its direct affiliation to the crime and wretchedness
which sheltered itself from punishment or persecution under the shadow of
the Abboy so the vicinity of the great Temple at Ephesus reeked with the
congregated pollutions of Aaia. Legend told how, when the temple was
1 Bee the Corpus Inter. Gr. 2957
; 2961, &o. (Renan, p. 338, who also quotes Plui
Tit. Anton. 21). Chandler, Travdt, \. 25 ; Falkener, Ephetut, p. Ill ; 4>ac