The Sacred Identity of Ephesos offers a full-length interpretation of one of the largest known bequests in the Classical world, made to the city of Ephesos in AD 104 by a wealthy Roman equestrian, and challenges some of the basic assumptions made about the significance of the Greek cultural renaissance known as the ‘Second Sophistic’.

Professor Rogers shows how the civic rituals created by the foundation symbolised a contemporary social hierarchy, and how the ruling class used foundation myths - the birth of the goddess Artemis in a grove above the city – as a tangible source...