20

Herostratus

(337 words)

I 1 The giant Temple of Artemis overlooked the Mediterranean and

was the pride of the city of Ephesus. It had taken 120 years to
build and was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World—until the day in 356 BC when a young Greek
5 named Herostratus burned it down.
II The catastrophe shocked Ephesus, as did the arsonist’s motive:
After his arrest, Herostratus said he set the temple on fire so his
name would be remembered forever. He is the namesake of
herostratic criminals, lawbreakers who act solely for the purpose
10 of achieving notoriety.
III Herostratus’s target was carefully chosen. The Temple of
Artemis, dedicated to the goddess of childbirth and the hunt, was
larger than the Parthenon in Athens. Its construction had been
funded by the legendarily wealthy King Croesus. “The Temple of
15 Artemis in Ephesus is the only house of the gods,” wrote an
admirer, Philo of Byzantium. “For whoever examines it will
 21

believe that the gods exchanged the heavenly regions of

immortality to have a place upon the earth.”
IV Little is known about Herostratus’s life before the fire. After his
20 arrest, he was subjected to torture on the rack, a penalty usually
inflicted only upon noncitizens—suggesting that he may not have
been a native Ephesan, or may have been a slave.
V After his execution, officials in Ephesus imposed an additional
punishment on Herostratus. Seeking to deprive him of the glory
25 he had sought, they barred the very mention of his name.
Although the ban was widely observed for hundreds of years, one
ancient writer violated the prohibition—ensuring that
Herostratus’s name would survive and acquire the eternal infamy
he had desired.
VI 30 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
1. Ephesus is now Efes, Turkey. The city’s extensive Greek
ruins, including the remains of the Temple of Artemis,
were excavated beginning in the nineteenth century.
2. The torching of the temple was the basis for “The Lunacy
35 of Herostratus,” by the German poet Georg Heym
(1887–1912), and for a Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) short
story, “L’Érostrate.”
3. Stratos means “army” in Greek; Herostratos means “army
hero.”