s lopes of Mount Koressos, and above a mile north was the Temple of the Great Goddess Artemis. The Greek

colonists in their new land naturally worshipped the deity who presided over the land. Gradually they came

to pay more respect to her than to their own patroness and guardian deity Athena, who had led them across

the sea from Athens. The holy village around the Hieron of Artemis can hardly have existed in this period:

Ephesus was moved to the southern position and transformed into a Greek city. The population of the city

was at first divided into three Tribes, of which Epheseis the first was evidently the Anatolian division, while

Euonymoi, containing the Athenian colonists, was only the second.

The sea gradually retreated towards the west during this period; and the Temple of Artemis was now a

sanctuary within a large sacred precinct in the plain. But the goddess, though worshipped by the Greeks,

was not transformed into a Greek deity. She remained an Anatolian deity in character and in ritual. The

Divine n ature does not change.

A new era began after 560 BC, when Ephesus was conquered by Croesus. The city was now attached to the

Temple of Artemis; and the population was moved back from the higher ground and dwelt once more beside

the Temple. Smyrna, the deserted site of the Ionian Ephesus, was now behind the city (as Hipponax says).

The change marked the entire triumph of the Asiatic or Anatolian element over the Greek in the Ephesian

population. The Anatolian element had always been strong in the populatio n of the Greek city; the Ephesian

Goddess was henceforth the national deity of the city, the patroness of the family and municipal life. Thus,

the change of situation about 550 BC accompanied a change in spirit and character.

Ephesus was not, however, reduced entirely to the pure Anatolian village system. It was not a mere union of

villages with the Temple as the only centre; it was a city with a certain organisation and a certain form of

municipal government. Power was apportioned to the different sections of the population by the usual Greek

device of a division into Tribes: each Tribe had one vote, and a more numerous body in one Tribe had no

more power than a small number of citizens in another. It had its own acropolis, probably the hill of

Ayassoluk, overhanging the Temple on the northeast. It struck its own coins in silver and electrum (the sure

proof of administrative independence as a city); but they were entirely hieratic in character and types, and

for nearly three centuries after 560 it must be ranked rather as an Anatolian town than as a Greek city.

Figure 12: A, B. Coin of the Anatolian Ephesus

It was, indeed, forced, after 479, to join the union of Greek States which was called the Delian Confederacy;

but it seceded at the earliest opportunity; and the goddess was always inclined to side with the Persians

against the Greeks, and with oligarchic Sparta against democratic Athens.

With the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great, after 335, the Greek spirit began to strengthen itself in

Ephesus and in general throughout the country. This is first perceptible in the coinage. The bee, the sacred

insect and the symbol of the Great Goddess, had hitherto always been the principal type on Ephesian coins.

Now about 295 BC a purely Greek type, the head of the Greek Artemis, the Virgin "Queen and Huntress

chaste and fair," was substituted for the bee on the silver coins, while the less honourable copper coinage

retained the old hieratic types.

Figure 13: A, B. Coin of the Hellenic Ephesus

The importance of this change of type arises from the character of the Great Goddess. She is the expression

of a religious belief, which regarded the life of God as embodying and representing the life of nature, and

proceeding according to the analogy of the natural world, so that in the drama of Divine life there is a God-

Father, a Goddess-Mother, and a Son or a Daughter (the Maiden Kora or other various ideas), born again

and again in the annual cycle (or sometimes in longer cycles) of existence. The mutual relations of those

beings were often pictured in the Divine drama according to the analogy of some kind of earthly life. In the

Ephesian ceremonial the life of the bee was the model: the Great Goddess was the queen-bee, the mother of