356 BCE: Herostratus burns the Temple of Artemis

ExecutedToday.com ^ | July 21, 2013 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

By the ancient world’s tradition, it was on July 21, 356 — the night of Alexander the Great‘s birth* — that a theretofore forgettable man set fire to the wooden rafters of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus.

Situated on the Hellenized coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selcuk, Turkey, Ephesus was one of the great cities of the Mediterranean. It counted Artemis (Diana) its patron deity, and gloried in a jaw-dropping marble temple, bankrolled two centuries before by the Lydian king Croesus, that would have nearly covered a modern football pitch. Ephesians took their Artemis seriously: 400-plus years later, St. Paul would barely escape lynching at the hands of enraged Artemis devotees when he proselytized there.

What a horror it must have been for 4th century BCE Ephesians to awake this day to the destruction of their city’s own sacred pride.

Even more shockingly, the temple’s destroyer made no effort to conceal himself. He openly boasted of his act, and of the horrifying reason for it: merely to exalt his obscure name with the luster of infamy.

[CheshireTheCat]

There have always been people who have wanted to watch the world burn and who want people to know that.

[EvilCapitalist]

BCE? Before the Christian Era.

[Bayard]

“Because we want some momentous event that would let us not count back from when Jesus came and rose from the dead, but we don’t expect people to actually count with another number.

So, we will fig leaf the biggest moment in history because we’re nice ‘woke’ academics.”

[Jan_Sobieski]

Karl Marx may have been the most infamous...

The following lines are taken from Marx from the poem entiled: “Conjuration of falling into despair.”

I’ll set up my throne above, Cold and terrible will be the peak of it. Superstitious trembling is at its base, Master – most black agony.

The one who will look with healthy looks, Will turn away, turn pale and deadly mute. Possessed by blind and cold deathness, will prepare a tomb with his happiness

[Fiji Hill]

356 BCE BC: Herostratus burns the Temple of Artemis

FIFY

[freedumb2003]

BLACKVS LIVVS MATTERVS.

[Fiji Hill]

:BCE? Before the Christian Era.

BCE--Before the Communist Era.

[MarineBrat]

BCE = wouldn’t read it for money.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks CheshireTheCat.