But of the cities of W. Asia, no one took a higher place than EPHESUS; though not one of the most ancient, or noticed by Homer. Pliny ascribes its origin to the Amazons; and Strabo gives an excellent account of its site, the chief feature of which was a celebrated port called Panormus, with the temple of Diana, one of the Seven Wonders of the world, at a little distance without the city walls. The worship of this Diana (of Asiatic origin, and symbolized by her peculiar statue) was earlier than the planting of the Ionian colony by Androcles, as has been reasonably suspected, on a hill called Coressus, the lower ground (ultimately the chief part of the city) having been only gradually built over. After its first colonization we hear nothing of Ephesus till the time of Crœsus, who is said to have failed to take the town, owing to a device of a certain Pindarus, who attached the city to the temple by a rope, thus making the intervening space sacred, or an asylum. On this the story goes, that Crœsus, of all princes then ruling, a lover of the gods, spared, indeed, the city, but showed his common sense by changing its constitution and banishing Pindarus. It further appears that Crœsus dedicated golden bulls at Ephesus, and helped largely in the construction of the first temple dedicated there. The temple we now know was about 1,400 yards from the city, a fact, apparently, not anticipated by the first modern investigators of its site. The inhabitants of Ephesus, as a rule, were time-servers, and ready to court the support of whosoever for the time being were their most powerful neighbours. Thus, at first, they joined the Ionian revolt; then, on the overthrow of Xerxes, were for a while tributary to Athens; and then, again, after the victories of Lysander, permitted their city to be the head-quarters of the Spartan operations against Asia Minor; though he could not, however, persuade the people to change the name of their city to that of his wife Arsinoe. After the overthrow of Antiochus, Ephesus was added by the Romans to the kingdom of Pergamus.