But these robberies fade into insignificance when the insult heaped upon the Delphians and their Oracle by Constantine the Great is recalled. This Roman vandal not only removed the sacred Tripod and Brazen Column which supported it, but degenerated their use to the adornment of the hippodrome of the new city he built on the Bosphorus. The Brazen Column may still be seen in Constantinople, but the sacred Tripod has disappeared forever. There is a little story connected with a first disappearance of the Tripod that may be worth the telling. It was lost at sea, but afterward recovered by some fishermen. When Pythia was asked to decide to whom it should be given, her answer was that it should be bestowed upon the wisest man in Greece. Accordingly it was sent to Thales of Miletos. He, however, was too modest to retain it, and passed it over to Bias as a wiser man; Bias was also embarrassed by the selection, and presented it to another of the Grecian sages; he to still another, and so on, until it had made the circuit of pretty much every person in Greece with any claim at all to superior wisdom. Finally, however, it came back once more to Thales, who successfully ended its itinerary by dedicating it to the Delphic Apollo. One of the earliest of the great temples to be erected in the Ionic order was that begun in the Ionian city of Ephesus in Asiatic Greece by Ctesiphon, a Cretan architect born in Cnossus, and his son, Metagenes. This temple was erected to the glory of the many-breasted and mummy-like appearing Artemis, a goddess peculiar to the Ephesians, whom the Greek colonists there doubtless inherited from the Asiatic races that preceded them in their Ionian settlement. There was nothing of the graceful, virgin-like characteristics of Apollo’s sister, the Arcadian Artemis, in this Ephesian goddess, but the Ionian Greeks were quite partial to her, attended her with eunuch priests, and built in her honor this temple, so grand and magnificent that it was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world.