From around 1000 to 550 BC the city of Ephesus was located at the northern based of Mt. Pion, near the place where the Cayster River met the Aegean Sea; from 550 BC, it was situated near the Artemisium. Ephesus was one of the Greek world’s foremost cities during the Ionian heyday of the 600s and 500s BC.
Croesus of Lydia conquered the city in 560 BC, and moved its inhabitants to a new site near the new temple of Artemis, which he adorned with elaborate columns.
In the third century BC Ephesus was in turn under the Seleucids and the Ptolemies of Egypt. After the defeat of Antiochus III, the city was made subject to the rule of Eumenes II in 188, and seems to have flourished under Pergamene rule.
Ephesus can under the control of Rome after Attalos III of Pergamum bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans in 133 BC, although Ephesus was granted its freedom by Rome. Ephesus reached its height under the Roman Empire, when it was the residence of the proconsul of Asia and set of the imperial cult.
The town was finally destroyed in civil wars in the early 15th century. In the Ottoman period only a few Greek Christians remained in a declining town that suffered from malaria and nomadism.
Ancient city of Ephesus
