page_title: Ephesus
section_title: The Roman population
hierarchical_section_title: Ephesus / History / Roman period / The Roman population
context_page_description: Ephesus was an ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, three kilometres southwest of present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of the former Arzawan capital by Attic and Ionian Greek colonists. During the Classical Greek era it was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League. The city flourished after it came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC.
  The city was famed for the nearby Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Among many other monumental buildings are the Library of Celsus, and a theatre capable of holding 25,000 spectators.
  Ephesus was one of the seven churches of Asia that are cited in the Book of Revelation. The Gospel of John may have been written here. The city was the site of several
  5th-century Christian Councils.
  The city was destroyed by the Goths in 263, and although rebuilt, the city's importance as a commercial centre declined as the harbour was slowly silted up by the Küçükmenderes River. It was partially destroyed by an earthquake in AD 614.
context_section_description: Until recently the population of Ephesus in Roman times was estimated to number up to 225,000 people by Broughton. More recent scholarship regards these estimates as unrealistic. Such a large estimate would require population densities seen in only a few ancient cities, or extensive settlement outside the city walls. This would have been impossible at Ephesus because of the mountain ranges, coastline and quarries which surrounded the city.
  The wall of Lysimachus has been estimated to enclose an area of 415 hectares (1,030 acres). Not all of this area was inhabited due to public buildings and spaces in the centre and the steep slope of the Bülbül Dağı mountain, which was enclosed by the wall. Ludwig Burchner estimated this area with the walls at 1000.5 acres. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor uses an estimate of 345 hectares for the inhabited land or 835 acres (Murphey cites Ludwig Burchner). He cites Josiah Russell using 832 acres and Old Jerusalem in 1918 as the yardstick estimated the population at 51,068 at 14.85 persons per thousand square meters. Using 51 persons per thousand square meters he arrives at a population between 138,000 and 172,500.  J. W. Hanson estimated the inhabited space to be smaller at 224 hectares (550 acres). He argues that population densities of 150 or 250 people per hectare (100 per acre) are more realistic which gives a range of 33,600 to 56,000 inhabitants. Even with these much lower population estimates, Ephesus was one of the largest cities of Roman Asia Minor, ranking it as the largest city after Sardis and Alexandria Troas. By contrast Rome within the walls encompassed 1500 hectares = 3,600 acres with a population estimated to between 750,000 and one million (over 1000 built-up acres were left outside the Aurelian Wall whose construction was begun in 274 and finished in 279) or 208 to 277 inhabitants per acres including open and public spaces.
caption: Artist Simon Kozhin Ephesus. Ruins Temple of Hadrian.
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