The Harbour of Ephesus (and Harbour Street)

Ephesus lived by its harbour. A colonnaded avenue half a kilometre long ran from the theatre down to the wharves, and the whole trade of Roman Asia came up it. But the Cayster River never stopped laying down silt, and the last serious dredging was decades in the past. The greatest port in Asia was closing — not by war or conquest, but by the slow failure of maintenance, a degree narrower every few years.

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