Falkener, Edward: Ephesus and the temple of Diana (London, 1862)

IV.

THE CELEBRATED TEMPLE.

1. Difficulties of the subject.

If we have met with difficulties respecting the
other buildings of the city, we now approach others
of equal or greater magnitude. Choiseul Gouffier
thus ingenuously expresses himself with regard to
the Temple of Diana :—

" Many authors have spoken of this monument,
and have only served to add to its reputation,
without making us better acquainted with it. A
single description, if it were in accordance with
probability, although not perfectly true in all par-
ticulars, would have left us in a satisfied, though
erroneous belief, and we should have adopted with
security an opinion which nothing would have
contradicted: but what can we conclude from
quotations scattered in different works, the most
authentic of which are precisely those Avhich con-
tradict themselves the most openly, and which by the
aid of commentaries, rendered more unintelligible
to the commentators themselves, have served only
to make them imagine plans almost always opposed
to the constant usages of the ancients ? If I have