Ephesus, near modern Selçuk in Turkey, now stands about three miles from the sea it once ruled. People lived in the valley from around 6000 BC, and the Hittite city of Apasa, capital of Arzawa, was likely the same place. Greek legend credited either an Amazon queen or the Athenian prince Androclus, who followed an oracle about a fish and a boar. When King Croesus of Lydia besieged the city, Ephesians tied a rope from their walls to the Temple of Artemis about a mile away, declaring the city sacred, and Croesus relented. In 356 BC Herostratus burned the temple for fame, and the Ephesians turned down Alexander the Great’s offer to rebuild it, saying one god should not build a temple for another.

Meanwhile the Cayster River, carrying soil loosened by logging, filled the harbor with silt and turned it into malarial marsh. Lysimachus moved the city about two kilometers to higher ground by blocking its drains during a storm and flooding residents out. Under Rome, Ephesus became capital of the province of Asia, second only to Rome according to Strabo, until 88 BC, when Ephesians joined Mithridates in the slaughter of Romans across the region. Paul’s preaching sparked a silversmiths’ riot in the 24,000 seat theater. Dredging failed, raids and earthquakes followed, and by the 15th century the city was abandoned, until John Turtle Wood dug through 20 feet of mud starting in 1863.

• Mark Antony and Cleopatra gathering 800 ships in the harbor before Actium
• Why population estimates fell from over 225,000 to between 33,000 and 92,000
• The rebuilt Temple of Artemis at 418 by 239 feet and the silver shrine trade it fed
• How Ephesians tricked, jailed, and killed Mithridates’ governor Zenobius
• The capture of 7,000 Ephesians in an Arab raid in 781