other with places of honor at the festivals, sucking up the profits from the import and export trade, even sticking their fingers into the treasury at the Temple of Artemis, which is the great bank for all of Asia and the lifeblood of Ephesus. In the forty years since the Romans established their authority here, a great deal of resentment has been stirred up. If even a petty document-checker at the gate feels he can speak to you that way, I fear to imagine how others will behave. I think it might be best if we speak no more Latin while we’re here in Ephesus, Gordianus, even among ourselves. Others may overhear and make assumptions.”
Somewhere in the middle of this discourse, he had switched from Latin to Greek, and it took my mind a moment to catch up.
“That may be … a challenge,” I finally said, pausing to think of the Greek word.
Antipater sighed. “Your words may be Greek, but your accent is decidedly Roman.”
“You told the document-checker I had a good accent!”
“Yes, well … perhaps you should simply speak as little as possible.”
We followed the crowd and found ourselves in a marketplace thronged with pilgrims and tourists, where vendors sold all sorts of foodstuffs and a great variety of talismans. There were miniature replicas of Artemis’s temple as well as images of the goddess herself. These images came in many sizes and were fashioned from various materials, from crudely made terra-cotta or wooden trinkets to statuettes that displayed the highest standards of craftsmanship, some advertised as being cast of solid gold.
I paused to admire a statuette of the goddess in her Ephesian guise, which seems so exotic to Roman eyes. Our Artemis—we call her Diana—is a virgin huntress; she carries a bow and wears a short, simple tunic suitable for the chase. But this manifestation of the goddess—presumably more ancient—stood stiffly upright with her bent elbows against her body, her forearms extended and her hands open. She wore a mural crown, and outlining her head was a nimbus decorated with winged bulls. More bulls, along with other animals, adorned the stiff garment that covered her lower body, almost like a mummy casing. From her neck hung a necklace of acorns, and below this I saw the most striking feature of Artemis of Ephesus, a mass of pendulous, gourd-shaped protrusions that hung in a cluster from her upper body. I might have taken these for multiple breasts, had Antipater not explained to me that these protrusions were bulls’ testicles. Many bulls would be sacrificed to the virgin goddess during the festival.
I picked up the image to look at it more closely. The gold was quite heavy.
“Don’t touch unless you intend to buy!” snapped the vendor, a gaunt man with a long beard. He snatched the little statue from my hand.
“Sorry,” I said, lapsing into Latin. The vendor gave me a nasty look.
We moved on. “Do you think that image was really made of solid gold?” I asked Antipater.
“Yes, and therefore far beyond your means.”
“Do people really buy such expensive items for keepsakes?”
“Not for keepsakes, but to make offerings. Pilgrims purchase whichever of the images they can afford, then donate them to the Temple of Artemis to honor the goddess.”
“But the priests must collect thousands of talismans.”
“Megabyzoi—the priests are called Megabyzoi,” he explained. “And yes, they collect many talismans during the festivals.”
“What do the Megabyzoi do with all those images?”
“The offerings are added to the wealth of the temple treasury, of course.”
I looked at the vast number of people around us. The open-air market seemed to stretch on forever. “So the vendors make a nice profit selling the images, and the temple receives a hefty income from all those offerings.”
Antipater smiled. “Don’t forget what the pilgrims receive—participation in one of the most beloved religious festivals in the world, an open-air feast, and the favor of the goddess, including her protection on their journey home. But the donation of these trinkets is only a tiny part of the temple’s income. Rich men from many cities and even foreign kings store their fortunes in the temple’s vaults and pay a handsome fee for the service. That vast reservoir of wealth allows the Megabyzoi to make loans, charging handsome interest. Artemis of Ephesus owns vineyards and quarries, pastures and salt-beds, fisheries and sacred herds of deer. The Temple of Artemis is one of the world’s great storehouses of wealth—and every Roman governor spends his tenure trying to find some way to get his hands on it.”
We bought some goat’s cheese on a skewer from a vendor and slowly made our way through the crowd. The crush lessened as we ascended a winding street that took us halfway up Mount Pion, where we at last arrived at the house of Eutropius.
“It’s larger than I remember it,” said Antipater, gazing at the immaculately maintained facade. “I do believe he’s added a story since I was here.”
The slave who answered the door dismissed our baggage carriers and instructed some underlings to take our things to the guest quarters. We were shown to a garden at the center of the house where our host reclined on a couch, apparently just waking from a nap. Eutropius was perhaps forty, with a robust physique and the first touch of frost in his golden hair. He wore a beautifully tailored robe spun from coarse silk dyed a rich saffron hue.
He sprang up and approached Antipater with open arms. “Teacher!” he exclaimed. “You haven’t aged a bit.”
“Nonsense!” Antipater gestured to his white hair, but smiled, pleased by the compliment. He introduced me to our host.
I heard a muffled roar as the air above our heads resounded with the sound of a great many people laughing.
“From the theater,” explained Eutropius.
“But why are you not there?” asked Antipater.
“Bah! Plays bore me—all those actors making terrible puns and behaving like idiots. You taught me to love poetry, Teacher, but I’m afraid you were never able to imbue me with a love of comedy.”
