Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/124

The People. 103 Artemis when they adopted her worship. As with the sanctuaries of Pessinus and Comana, here also the service of the temple was discharged by a whole crowd of slaves of either sex.* Excited by orgiac rites, women themselves took part in the fights that went on in the precincts of the temple. The reckless courage of these priestesses struck the imagination of the Greeks, and suggested to them the Amazonian type which holds so large a place in their poetry, and above all in their plastic art. For more than two score of years, the colonists settled on the northern point of Samos vainly strove to get a foothold on the lower course of the Cayster; they at last succeeded, under the leadership of the Athenian Androcles, and founded there a town which took its name of Ephesus from the local goddess. With the passage of time, the sacred building fell into the hands of the lonians, but though the service — prayers and singing — was conducted in Greek, the rites never lost the stamp of their Oriental origin. This is evidenced in the very characteristic ceremonies that were enacted here and elsewhere, but above all in the strange and almost monstrous image representing the Ephesian Artemis.* We know that if the ^Eolians and lonians had thus effected a forcible entry into Asia, it was because they had been disturbed out of their seats by the Dorians. But these had no such cause for trusting themselves on the unstable element, and the risks involved in colonial enterprises. It is somewhat of a surprise, therefore, to see them carried headlong by the impetus acquired as it were in their former expeditions, swarming out of Pelopon- nesus by several issues, where they had earned for themselves such pleasant and goodly places. Closer inspection reveals the fact that they did but continue their march from north to south, which brought them through hill and dale, from the borders of Macedonia to the southernmost point of the peninsula, and that they shared in the strange mania which at this time caused "a general wandering of the nations" throughout Greece. At first the craze for displacement was confined to those clans that had been rooted out of their habitations, and whose regret for their ^ On these slaves attached to the temple, and the orgiac rites of Phrygia, see History of Art ^ under the heading of "Phrygia," etc. 2 E. Curtius collected and commented with rare insight on the brief and scanty texts which bear upon the Asiatic beginnings of Grecian Ephesus and its famous Artemis.