columns that again echo the Library of Celsus, was that seen from the
plaza. Though named a propylon, it is not ‘‘before’’ anything but a road,
aiming more south than west toward the sacred site of Ortygia. The
Propylon is structurally a Roman triumphal arch, but instead of copying
an Italian model, it is so tall and thin as to be two-dimensional, with a
Syrian-style pediment at the top, unusual on arches, but known on other
Hadrianic buildings at Ephesos. Its closest match is the Arch of Hadrian in
Athens, which is similar in design, though the Ephesos Propylon may well
be the earlier of the two.^45 There is just enough room for statues to stand
on the lower level: on a late inscribed base propped against the Propylon,
one Demeas boasts of having taken down the image of the daimon
Artemis and put up a Christian cross instead.
46
We know nothing
else of the decor, or whether it had any Latin inscriptions. If there was a
statue of the city goddess Artemis on the Propylon, she might have been
accompanied by a statue of the emperor, as on the Gate of Mazaeus and
Mithridates; the goddess and the emperors cohabit on almost every
building dedication in Roman Ephesos, and their silver and gold images
were set up together in the theater and carried in processions all around
the city.^47
After the Propylon was built, a new building was added to the plaza
(figure 4.5). Its foundation, which is all we have, takes the shape of a
shallow U, with a broad staircase on the front. This used to be called the
‘‘Altar Building,’’ not just from a slight resemblance to altar-courts like
that of Zeus at Pergamon, but because sculptural blocks of the so-called
Parthian monument were found nearby and attributed to it. Now other
pieces of that monument have been found elsewhere; also, the 70-meter
length of its frieze would barely fit on this shallow foundation, whose
walls offer just under 75 meters of display space.^48 In default of this,
fragments found near the theater, possibly from another displaced altar
depicting amazon(s), have also been associated with the foundation,
though the argument is not compelling.^49
- The term ‘‘Syrian’’ for a pediment with arched entablature does not necessarily
indicate ethnicity or origin, as Butcher (2003, 290) pithily observes. For the Arch of Hadrian
in Athens, Willers 1990, 68 92. Note that, like the Ephesos Propylon, the two sides of the
Arch of Hadrian also mark outer limits, not entry: when one reads the inscription for the
‘‘city of Hadrian’’ on the east side, that region is behind, not before, the viewer. This
directionality is not noted by the otherwise theoretically loaded Gheorghiu, 2003.
46.IvE1351; Thu ̈r 1989, 129 31. - G. Rogers 1991.
- Oberleitner 1999. Though Thu ̈r (1989, 26) previously accepted the Parthian
Monument’s 170C.E. date for the U shaped building, only noting that its socle that butts
against (and thus postdates) the Propylon may not have been from its first phase, she now
(with Pyszkowski Wyzykowski 2006, 155) says that the U shaped building is earlier than the
Propylon. This contradicts excavation evidence (Jobst 1983, 215 29). - Thu ̈r 2005.IvE3059, a statue base of a priestess of Artemis found during excavations
in the Agora, should not be taken to identify a ‘‘sacred place of Artemis on the Embolos,’’ and
Reading, Hearing, and Looking at Ephesos 83