purpose) which stands in the plain about fifty yards in front of the northwest corner of Pion and of the

Stadium. From either of these points one looks northeast and east over the valley and the site of the great

Temple of Artemis to the Holy Hill of Ayassoluk, which overhung the Temple, and to the piled-up ranges of

mountains beyond.

The modern visitor to Ephesus rarely finds time or has inclination to visit St. Paul's Prison: the name is

traditional in the locality, but though the tower was certainly in existence at the time of St. Paul's residence in

the city, there is no reason to think that he was ever imprisoned in Ephesus. It is, however, quite probable

that in the Byzantine time the Apostle's name was attached to the hill and fort in place of the older name

Astyages. Not merely does this western hill permit a survey over the city and valley almost equal in

completeness to the view from Pion: there is also a remarkable phenomenon observable here and nowhere

else in Ephesus. At the foot of the hill lies the ancient harbour, now a marsh dense with reeds. When a wind

blows across the reeds, there rises to the hilltop a strange vast volume of sound of a wonderfully impressive

kind; the present writer has sat for several hours alone on the summit, spellbound by that unearthly sound,

until the approach of sunset and the prospect of a three hours' ride home compelled departure.

In ancient times by far the most impressive view of Ephesus was that which unfolded itself before the eyes

of the voyager from the west. But the changes that time has wrought have robbed the modern traveller of

that view. The ancient traveller, official or scholar, trader or tourist, coming across the Aegean Sea from the

west, between Chios and Samos, sailed into Ephesus. The modern shore is a harbourless line of sandy

beach, unapproachable by a s hip.

The plain of Ephesus is distinctly broader near the city than it is at the present seacoast. The narrowness of

the entrance, what may be called the sea-gate of the valley, has been an important factor in determining its

history. Some miles above the city the valley is again narrowed by ridges projecting from the mountains of

Gallesion and Koressos. In this narrow gap are the bridges by which the railway and the road from Smyrna

cross the Cayster, whose banks here are now only ten feet above sea level, though the direct distance to the

sea is ten kilometres and the river course is fully sixteen or twenty kilometres. Between these upper or

eastern narrows and the modern seacoast lies the picturesque Ephesian plain, once the Gulf of Ephesus. The

river Cayster has gradually silted up the gulf to the outer coastline beyond the ends of the mountains, and

has made Ephesus seem like an inland city, whereas Strabo in AD 20 describes it as a city of the coast.

But about 1100 BC the sea extended right up to the n arrows above Ephesus. Greek tradition in the valley,

which can hardly have reached back farther than 1200 BC, remembered that state of things, when the large

rocky hill, two kilometres north of the Roman city, across the Cayster, was an island named Syria, and the

whole Ephesian valley was an arm of the sea, dotted with rocky islets, and bordered by picturesque

mountains and wooded promontories. near the southeastern end of the gulf, on the seashore, stood the

shrine of the Great Goddess, the Mother, protector, teacher, and mistress of a simple and obedient people.

There was no city at that time; but the people, Lelegians and Carians, dwelt after the Anatolian fashion in

villages, and all looked for direction and government to the Goddess and to the priests who declared her

will. Ephesus even then had some maritime interests, directed, like everything else, by the Goddess herself

through her priests. Hence, even when the Temple was far distant from the receding seashore, a certain

body of shipment was attached to its service, through the conservatism of a religion which let no hieratic

institution die. The hill of Ayassoluk, between the Temple and the railway station, was a defensive centre

close at hand for the servants of the Goddess. History shows that it was the Holy Hill, though that title is

never recorded in our scanty authorities.

The sense of the holiness of this hill, and of the low ground beneath its western slope, was never wholly

lost amid all the changes of religion that occurred in ancient and medieval times. On the hill Justinian's great

Church of St. John Theologos was built; the medieval town was called Agios Theologos or Ayo-Thologo,

the Turkish Ayassoluk; and the coins of a Seljuk principality, whose centre was at this town, bear the

legend in medieval Latin Moneta Que Fit In Theologo. Between the church and the old temple of the

goddess stands the splendid mosque of Isa Bey. The modern traveller, standing on the southern edge of the