7.1 Summary

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Octagon. The burial of a young woman in its grave chamber and also its octagonal form led to
an almost unanimously accepted Interpretation as the dynastic burial site of Arsinoe IV, who was
murdered in Ephesos in 41 B.C. The evaluation of the finds from the Southern foundation area
of the Octagon (Room 45c) and the architectural decoration have resulted in an unambiguous
dating to the last quarter of the lst Century B.C. - the structure therefore ought to have been first
completed about 20 years after the murder of Arsinoe. For this reason, alternative possibilities
of interpretation, in connection with the civic euergetism of the period of Augustus, are also
proposed for this building.
Düring the imperial period the Curetes Street was the main boulevard of the city; after the
Augustan period, the appearance of the lower Embolos in the south was characterised by the
individual monuments as well as by the residential units of the splendid Terrace Houses lying
behind, and in the north by a large peristyle house to the west of Insula Ml. The date of the first
fitting of marble slabs on the previously gravelled Street and the precise date of the setting up
of the colonnades cannot be more precisely archaeologically identified due to a lack of perti-
nent find complexes in the area investigated. According to the epigraphic tradition, the paving
with marble slabs occurred during the Domitianic period and presumably was associated with a
transformation of the flanking areas into colonnades. Nevertheless, an earlier refurbishing of the
Street - via analogy for example with the so-called Marble Street - or a successive new design
of the Street cannot be ruled out ex silentio.
On the immediate northern side of the lower Embolos only a few building activities of the
imperial period can be identified: these are limited to two channels in the region of the later
Curetes Halls, which can be dated to the lst Century A.D.
The construction of the Library of Celsus, which after 110 A.D. formed an impressive Western
termination of the quarter, was certainly of decisive importance for the design and appearance
of the lower Embolos. Only a short while later, the Southern side of the lower Embolos received
a propylon with the so-called Hadrian’s Gate. This constituted the monumental transition to the
Stepped Street 3, on the east side of which lay the entrances to the residences of the Ephesian
aristocracy. A fundamental change in function presumably accompanied the replacement of the
gravel surface of the Curetes Street with marble paving, and the increasingly monumental con-
figuration as a colonnaded Street: in the mid-imperial period it was transformed from an inner-
urban traffic route into a splendid boulevard (possibly with less traffic).
In the third quarter of the 3rd Century, the Embolos might well have been impacted by severe
earthquakes, as were large parts of the surrounding civic area, even though clear evidence of
destructions and reconstructions along the Embolos has not yet been identified. Evidence for pos-
sible damage due to the series of earthquakes in the 3rd Century A.D. is offered by the reference in
inscriptions to the new paving of the so-called Triodos Plaza during the reign of Gordion. After
the series of earthquakes of the 3rd Century A.D. large sections of the city remained uninhabited
for a time, or even permanently.
Simple dwellings were not built into the existing debris levels in a number of places in the
formerly sumptuous residential insulae at the south and north of the lower Embolos until after
the 5th Century. This comparatively modest re-use nevertheless seems only to have affected the
previous domestic structures. The information gleaned from the contextual analysis of finds
indicates a completely different picture for the Embolos itself: here, a veritable building boom
can be observed in the 5th Century. Already in the first half of the 5th Century the so-called Aly-
tarches Stoa appeared on the south side of the Curetes Street. In addition, the construction of a
colonnaded building on the north side of the Street in the second half of the 5th Century can be
particularly highlighted. This structure, as well as its subsequent building - the so-called Curetes
Hall - can now be precisely dated for the first time: the so-called Curetes Hall was erected on
top of its predecessor at the beginning of the 6th Century A.D. The individual monuments which
bordered the Embolos in the south and west - the so-called Taberna II (Hellenistic fountain
house), the Hexagon, the Octagon, the Heroon and Hadrian’s Gate as well as the Library of CeL