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Sigmund Freud published in 1911 a short paper entitled Great is Diana of the Ephesians. The title was taken from a poem by Goethe about an old goldsmith in Ephesus who works on undisturbed by the city's changes. The paper ranges over a span of roughly 3000 years, during which, with multis Multandi, the city continued to worship its “mother goddess.”
Freud starts by telling how the shrine of Ephesus first entered written history when held by people of Asiatic race worshipping the goddess, possibly under the name Oupis. The Ionians, a wave of Greek invaders, about 800 B.C. seized the city and identifying her with their Artemis, augmented her worship. They glorified her with increasingly magnificent temples. It was the fourth of these that was fired by Herostaratus in his bid for immortality. Tradition is that Alexander the Great was born the night of that fire. Opulently rebuilt, the temple became one of the seven wonders of the world. Freud compared it to Lourdes in the sense of its being a religious shrine with resulting commercial advantages. He relates that starting about 54 A.D. the apostle Paul spent several years there and founded a large Christian community. So successful were Paul's efforts that there was a falling off of trade for the goldsmith who made a living manufacturing small figurines of the goddess and models of the temple for public sale. Presumably spurred by both avadice and adoration, they rioted under the cry, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians,” and Paul had to flee the city.
Freud describes that the religious community Paul founded soon shifted its allegiance to St. John, who settled in the city accompanied by Mary. John was the favorite