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Artemis temple photos

Designed by the architect Chersiphron, with many of the columns, relates Herodotus (I.92), erected at the expense of Croesus, the fabulously wealthy king of Lydia (ruled 560-546 BC), the Ionic temple of Artemis at Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor was a wonder of the world. The first temple to be entirely of marble and the largest Greek temple ever built, it was some 377 feet long and 180 feet wide (larger by twenty feet on a side than a football field). Constructed on marshy ground, says Pliny (XXXVI. 21), so as not to be in danger from earthquakes, the foundation was laid on a bed of packed charcoal and sheepskins, the column drums and architraves moved from the quarry, relates Vitruvius (X.2.11-12), by fitting them with large wheels and then, like rolling axles, having them pulled by oxen.

Pliny goes on to say that the temple had 127 columns, each sixty feet high. Vitruvius (III.2.7) describes it as dipteral octastyle, that is, two rows of columns around the temple with eight on the front and rear faades. The few scattered remains, however, do not reveal a ground plan. One arrangement of the requisite number of columns is to have a double row of twenty-one along the sides, three rows of eight columns on the principle faade, two rows of nine columns at the rear, and the remainder filling the pronaos and opisthodomos (the front and back porches). Thirty-six of these columns, says Pliny, were carved with reliefs, one of them by Scopas (who he also said worked on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus). And, indeed, a huge sculptured drum, the only one in good enough condition to have been sent back to the British Museum, was found. But it would be a remarkable coincidence if this base had been carved by Scopas.