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For the Christians, the city, with its
highly advanced way of life, its high
standard of living, the variety of its
demographic composition and its firmly
rooted polytheistic culture, must have
presented itself as an ideal pilot
region... From written sources we
learn that St Paul remained in the
city for three years from 65 to 68,
and that it was here that he preached
his famous sermons calling upon the
hearers to embrace the faith in. one
God. He taught that God had no need of
a house made with human hands and that
he was present in all places at all
times. This was all greatly resented
by the craftsmen who had amassed great
wealth from their production of
statues of Artemis in gold, silver or
other materials. A silversmith by the
name of Demetrius stirred up the
people and led a crowd of thousands of
Ephesians to the theatre, where they
booed and stoned Paul and his two
colleagues, chanting "Great is Artemis
of the Ephesians! Great is Artemis of
the Ephesians!" So turbulent was the
crowd that Paul and his companions
escaped only with great difficulty.
From his Epistles to the communities
it would appear that Paul spent some
time as a prisoner in Ephesus.
Legend has it that St John the
Evangelist came to Ephesus with the
Virgin Mary in his care. Some also say
that it was here that he wrote his
Gospel and was finally buried. In 269
Ephesus and the surrounding country
was devastated by the Goths. At that
time there was still a temple in which
the cult of Artemis was practised. In
381, by order of the Emperor
Theodosius, the temple was closed
down, and in the following centuries
it lay completely abandoned, serving
as a quarry for building materials.
The situation of the city, which had
given it its privileged geographical
position, was also the cause of its
decline and fall. The prosperity of
the city had been based on its
possession of a sheltered natural
harbour, but by the Roman period ships
reached the harbour to the west of Mt
Pion 1.5 km from the Temple of Artemis
through a very narrow and difficult
channel. The cause of this was the
Meander (Cayster) River, which emptied
into the Aegean a little to the west
of the city of Ephesus, where it
created a delta formed by the alluvium
carried down by the river over
thousands of years. By the late
Byzantine era the channel had been so
silted up as to be no longer usable.
The sea gradually receded farther and
farther, while the marshy lands around
the harbour gave rise to a number of
diseases, such as malaria. The new
outlook that had arisen with the
spread of Christianity led to the
gradual abandonment of all buildings
bearing witness to the existence of
polytheistic cults and the
construction in their place of
Christian churches. In the year 431
the third Ecumenical council took
place in Ephesus.
Emperor Theodosius convoked another
council in Ephesus in 449, which came
to be known as the "robber council".
From the 6th century onwards the
Church of St John was an important
place of pilgrimage, and Justinian
took measures to protect it by
having.the whole hill on which it
stood surrounded by defence walls.
Shortly afterwards, the Church of the
Virgin and other places of worship
were destroyed and pillaged in Arab
raids. In the 7th century the city was
transferred to the site now occupied
by the town of Selçuk and during the
Byzantine era Ephesus grew up around
the summit of Mt Ayasuluğ. The city
enjoyed its last years of prosperity
under the Selçuk Emirate of the
Aydınoğulları. During the Middle Ages
the city ceased to function as a port.
By the 20th century the silt carried
down by the Meander had extended the
plain for a distance of 5 km.
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