The first cult I would like to focus on is the cult of Artemis Ephesia, a renowned deity of international caliber.2 The goddess had acquired notoriety well beyond the borders of Ephesos and Ionia already by the end of the 7th century BC, when she headed the Ionian colonization of the Far West, as we know from Strabo’s famous story of the foundation of Massalia by the Phokaians.3 When Xenophon, more than 200 years later, built a copy of the Ephesian Artemision in reduced size and established in it a xoanon of the goddess, both as close as pos- sible to the form of the originals,4 he merely followed the precedent set not only by the Phokaians, who had carefully preserved the nomima of the Ephesian cult at Massalia, but also of the Massaliotes who did likewise in Spain.5 Throughout the long history of the cult, however, the goddess remained primarily the Artemis of Ephesos.6 Just like her city, the prosperity of which depended both on the sea routes linking it to the West and on the inland routes linking it to the rich Asian hinterland, the goddess faced from time immemorial both towards the East and towards the West: her early connection with Croesus of Lydia,7 only decades after the colonization of Massalia under her protection, illustrates this universal- izing appeal. An Anatolian divinity in origin, Artemis Ephesia was consistently projected early on as a symbol of Ephesian and ‘Ionian Greek’ identity, without losing her inherently Anatolian character, which facilitated her assimilation with the Phrygian and Lydian Mother of the Gods and made her very popular with the indigenous Asian populations.8 The Artemision of Ephesos was one of the wonders of the ancient world9 and remained after its successive reconstructions one of the largest temples of the Roman empire. Τhe sanctuary complex and the cult were in many respects one of the foundations of the economic prosperity of Hellenistic Ephesos, and they continued to be a focal point not only of social life in Ephesos, but also of economic activity throughout the province of Asia in the Roman period.10 The Ephesians always took their role as apostles and protectors of the cult very seriously –to the point that they had officials of the interconnected and competing Artemis cult at Sardis executed, in the famous sacrilege incident.11 The popularity of the goddess and her cult are attested throughout the Greek world, from Africa and Alexandria to Pannonia, from the Peloponnese and the islands of the Aegean to the Black Sea, and from Marseille to all of Asia Minor, while the characteristic iconography of the goddess, so different from the one of Artemis the Huntress we are usually accustomed to, became a much reproduced divine image in the Roman World, especially in the 2nd century AD.12