Tradition relates that upon the very night that the great Alexander was born, the Ephesian temple was destroyed by fire, through the rapacious greed for notoriety of one Herostratus. This antique fire-bug, when put to the torture for his crime, confessed that his only object was to gain immortality for his name, an ambition which he succeeded in accomplishing through the stupidity of the states-general of Asiatic Greece. They decreed that the name of Herostratus should never be mentioned, and of course it always was, as all the contemporary historians felt impelled to record the fact that a man by the name of Herostratus was not to be mentioned, and to give the reasons therefor, and much more about Herostratus which, had there been no decree, might have been left unsaid. The result was and has been that a crank of antiquity has lived by name for twenty-five hundred years, and is quite likely to live for as many more. When Alexander the Great reached maturity, doubtless feeling the depression consequent upon having his advent into the world which he was destined to dominate, associated with the destruction of so magnificent a temple to the Asiatic Diana, offered, it is said, to pay the cost of its restoration, provided—there is frequently a proviso coupled with these liberal offers—provided his name should be inscribed on the new edifice. While the Ephesians were made glad by the offer, they did not readily fall in with the proviso. The cleverness of their diplomatic reply, however, appealed to the susceptible side of Alexander’s human nature, and effected a compromise. They told the Macedonian that “it was not right for a god to make offerings to gods.” The architect for the new temple was the great favorite of Alexander and his fellow-countryman, Dinocrates, who it is said rebuilt the edifice on even a more extravagant scale than was the first. Much of the marble and sculpturing of the old temple entered into the new, and the painters, statuaries and sculptors of the time again lavished upon it their best art. The walls were embellished from time to time by Parrhasius and Apelles; and Timarete, the first female artist of note of whom there is any record, contributed a picture of the honored Artemis. It is related that the folding doors or gates of this new temple were made of cypress that had been allowed to season for four generations, and that when the pieces of cypress wood were glued together the glue was allowed to remain for four years to harden. Mutianus, a Roman architect, states that when he found them, which was four hundred years afterward, they were as fresh and beautiful as when new.