Remains of the Theater at Ephesus
Posted on 06/02/2012 7:48:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The Great Theater at Apamea in northern Syria vies with the Large Theater at Ephesus, Turkey for the honor of being the largest extant Roman edifice of its type to have survived the ravages of time. Both buildings are estimated to have held audiences of over 20,000 persons, and both may have had their origins in an earlier Greek Hellenistic structure that was overbuilt in the Roman Era. Only one other theater, the Theater of Pompey in Rome, is known to have been larger. However, Pompey's lavish building is buried under the modern streets of the city, and its surviving remains can only be studied piecemeal in a few basements and cellars of Rome. The structures at Apamea and Ephesus thus provide archaeologists and historians with the largest extant visible examples of Roman Era theaters in the world, giving scholars unprecedented opportunities to study the variety of entertainments that theaters presented to the public, the roles theaters played in the socio-political milieus of their day, and the amazing accomplishments attained by Hellenistic and Roman engineers and craftsmen...
While the Large Theater at Ephesus (where St. Paul's teachings caused a demonstration by the pagan worshippers of Artemis/Diana) has been excavated, the Great Roman Theater at Apamea has never been fully exposed, studied, or understood in its cultural contexts utilizing the most up-to-date archaeological techniques. ...is associated with many unresolved questions and archaeological mysteries. For example, do the current visible remains of the Apamea Theater rest over earlier structures, possibly dating back to the Hellenistic Era and Seleucus Nicator's expansion of the Macedonian/Greek city after its founding by Alexander the Great? Significantly, very few Hellenistic buildings have survived from antiquity due to later Roman overbuilding and the quarrying of their finely finished building stones in the Christian and Islamic Periods.
(Excerpt) Read more at popular-archaeology.com ...
Remains of the Theater at Ephesus
Ephesus was a happening place back in the day. Hannibal spent some time there.
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His vacation trip didn’t last long though. ;’)
That was quite an impressive site, the ruins covered a pretty good sized area, much of it still unexcavated,, but of what they have dug up.. wow.
Her burka swaying,
The girl from Apamea goes walking
......
yitbos
:’D
Thanks!
People forget, or just don't know, that besides the Roman Legions being the Delta Force and Seal Team 6 of it's time, they BUILT all these great Architectural and Engineering wonders wherever they went. It wasn't like:
"Okay guys, we've conquered these Barbarians now we'll call in the Architect and Construction Manager while we go off to pillage, burn, and have our way with the livestock.";-)
Ephesus is amazing. Was there in 2011. They have apparently only dug up about 20% of it. The Library is also quite amazing.
Very true, the Roman system of roads was constructed for military use, and had the inadvertent effect of producing a transportation infrastructure for commercial activity.
The library there was a head-to-head competitor with the better known one at Alexandria.
http://www.google.com/images?q=ephesus+library&sa=X&oi=image_result_group
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