DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5179#0083
62 ANCIENT EPHESUS.
nians sending an ambassador to Cyrus, to tell him
that the Lacedemonians would resent any injury
done to any of the Greek cities in Asia Minor,
Cyrus asked the Greeks around him who these
Lacedemonians were, and of what force they were
possessed, to justify such lofty language. On being
informed, among other particulars, that the Greeks
have large open squares set apart for the conve-
nience of trade, he told the Spartan ambassador,
that men who had a large void space in their city,
where they assembled for the purpose of defrauding
one another, could never be objects of terror to him.
The Great Agora or Agora Civilis, as we will call
it, in order to distinguish it from the Agora Venalis,
or larger market-place, (Forum Opsoniorum,) like
the great forums of Rome and Pompeii, is sur-
rounded by the various public buildings of the city.
What I have called the Great Gymnasium is on its
west, the theatre and its gymnasium and some other
building on the east, the two agora? on its south,
while the buildings on the north have entirely dis-
appeared, and left a Christian double church in their
place. But the most remarkable feature of this
agora, and one in which it differs from and excels
every other, is an expansive lake1 in its centre, and
which we may reasonably conceive was once adorned
with colonnades, though no evidences of them
1 It is shown in Laborde's Panoramic View, and is referred to
by Pococke, pp. 50-2, and Egmont and Hayman's Travels, i.
106-7.
nians sending an ambassador to Cyrus, to tell him
that the Lacedemonians would resent any injury
done to any of the Greek cities in Asia Minor,
Cyrus asked the Greeks around him who these
Lacedemonians were, and of what force they were
possessed, to justify such lofty language. On being
informed, among other particulars, that the Greeks
have large open squares set apart for the conve-
nience of trade, he told the Spartan ambassador,
that men who had a large void space in their city,
where they assembled for the purpose of defrauding
one another, could never be objects of terror to him.
The Great Agora or Agora Civilis, as we will call
it, in order to distinguish it from the Agora Venalis,
or larger market-place, (Forum Opsoniorum,) like
the great forums of Rome and Pompeii, is sur-
rounded by the various public buildings of the city.
What I have called the Great Gymnasium is on its
west, the theatre and its gymnasium and some other
building on the east, the two agora? on its south,
while the buildings on the north have entirely dis-
appeared, and left a Christian double church in their
place. But the most remarkable feature of this
agora, and one in which it differs from and excels
every other, is an expansive lake1 in its centre, and
which we may reasonably conceive was once adorned
with colonnades, though no evidences of them
1 It is shown in Laborde's Panoramic View, and is referred to
by Pococke, pp. 50-2, and Egmont and Hayman's Travels, i.
106-7.