September 24, 1996
John and I think that a neat little addition to the sights at Ephesus would be to hand everyone who enters, a toga. Then the column lined streets would be filled, not with bright orange dresses, colored singlets, stretch shorts and blue jeans, but with clothing truly fitting to the era. But, alas, no white sheets and sandals, so we added our rubber-soled feet to the others and ventured out onto the grooved marble streets where chariot wheels rode long ago.
Ephesus is a white gem. It has been undergoing reconstruction for one hundred years making it the grandest Roman and Greek reconstruction site in the world. What an honor to follow where once walked Croesus of Lydia, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great. Where spiritual leaders met. Where Mary was proclaimed the Mother of God. We started our trip on Arcadian Way where tall marble columns line it's length to what was once the harbor. With a little help from our brochure, we could imagine the merchant shops that stood between them. Then we turned to the intersection with Marble Avenue and saw the amphitheater. An impressive sight with 25,000 seats set in a perfect semi-circular arch, Mt Pion looming behind. In the 1st-century AD a stadium was completed to the theater's left. Mostly in ruins now, this was where chariot and horse races were held, where gladiators and wild beasts met in combat before 70,000 spectators.
Marble Avenue is just as it's name implies. We passed intricately carved marble slabs, reliefs of warriors and solders, and then, half-way down, a fascinating inscription in the marble under our feet. One small square held this: an etching of a left foot, a cross above it, a crowned woman's head, a heart filled with holes and a rectangle. To the sailors who walked this street the meaning was probably clear (we had to listen to a tour guide to understand). At the intersection ahead, on the left, they could find the brothel, the house where the most beautiful ladies would open their hearts to them for a price. The holes in the heart showed that the ladies would never find true love, so quickly did their men return to sea.
The Library of Celsus was our next stop, conveniently located across
from the brothel. We thought it the best of the ruins. It stands at the
foot of the Street of Kuretes, a thoroughfare named for the college of
priests once located there, and dominates all with it's courtyard that
leads to steps that climb through
two-story pillars, past statues to the
reading room. Inside there are still rolls of papyrus.
The latrine, a bit further down the street, takes second place for interesting. It houses rows of toilets, seats all carved from the same block of marble and all ending in the same trough. We overheard a tour guide state that slaves were often told to head to latrine ahead of the nobility to warm up the seats Further along we came to the spice room, the fountain and the infamous, little known in her time, Goddess of Web Pages. There she was, headless, so I simply added the finishing touches, topped her off so to speak. Once be-headed again, we left the Goddess and proceeded to explore the mosaic tiled bath floors, the Temple of Hadrian, Temple of Domitian, another small theater where meetings were held and to pass through the Magnesian Gate to start our return trip.
Aside from the hoards of tour groups, the flashy clothing and the multiple languages we heard, we could truly have been walking in another time, a time of Roman scholars, learned men - wise and respected, of conquerors. Togas really would have made a nice touch. As soon as we exited the ruin grounds though we were whisked back to modern times. Just outside the gate are lines of souvenir shops, jewelry stores and, of course, the ubiquitous carpet shops. We allowed ourselves to be sucked into one, but only for a moment. Then we backed out and decided we wanted to remember our experience in Ephesus without the hype of modernism.
In keeping with that theme we camped in a grove of lime trees under the
Byzantine fortress of Selcuk. Under nighttime floodlights, it seemed to
float above us. Down the road were the ruins of an
