The chief glory of Ephesus was its temple. According to the most ancient reports, there had been in remote times one, at least, of the grandest proportions which Herodotus claims, with that of Juno at Samos, as among the greatest works of the Greeks. Its architect is said to have been contemporary with Theodorus and Rhœcus, the builders of the Samian Heræum, early in the sixth century B.C.; and Xenophon, especially, notices it, as he deposited there the share entrusted to him of the tenth, arising from sale of the slaves of the Ten Thousand at Cerasus, which was appropriated to Apollo and Artemis.[21] We have here an instance of a custom noticed elsewhere,—viz., that the great temples of the Hellenic world were often used as banks of deposit, where treasure was collected, not merely in the form of _anathemata_ or dedicated objects, but, also, in large quantities of bullion, &c., _in trust_. Many inscriptions in Boeckh show clearly that the administrators of the temples employed these treasures as loans. Artemis was, in fact, a queen, whose dower was the wealth accumulated in her temple. As is well known, the original (or the second temple of Artemis, for this point is not clear) was burnt by Herostratus, in B.C. 356, traditionally, on the same night on which Alexander the Great was born, but it was soon rebuilt. It would take a whole book, says Pliny, to describe all its details, and it is admitted to have been the largest temple of antiquity. Footnote 21: In Pausanias, vii. 11, will be found a very full and interesting account of the worship of the Ephesian Artemis, but it is too long to quote here. Pindar says, the worship was instituted by the Amazons, Crêsos or Korêsos, an autochthon, and Ephesus, the son of the river god Cayster, being the first builders of the temple. For details of the older temples, see Strab. xiv. 641; Xen. Anab. v. 3; Plin. xvi. 79; and Vitruv. x. 6. Among other valuables, the temple contained the famous picture by Apelles of Alexander, while the circuit round it was an asylum where debtors and worse rogues could screen themselves from justice, an evil which, as an inscription recently found there shows, Augustus found it needful to restrain within reasonable limits. Ephesus, too, was the usual port where the Roman proconsuls landed, on their way to their several provinces. Thus, Cicero came to Ephesus when going to his government in Cilicia. So, too, Metellus Scipio put in there before Pharsalia, and M. Antonius after Philippi. There, too, also, was collected the fleet of Antony and Cleopatra before the fatal day of Actium.[22] Footnote 22: Le Quien’s “Oriens Christianus” gives a list of seventy Christian bishops of Ephesus from Timothy to A.D. 1721. A good many of the later ones could only have been bishops in name.