The Temple of Artemis, an ancient wonder, was destroyed by arson
On this day · 21 July 356 BC
In 356 BCE a man torched one of the Seven Wonders of the world for no reason but to make his name immortal.
In 356 BCE, by ancient tradition on the night Alexander the Great was born, the great Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was deliberately set ablaze. A man named Herostratus put a torch to the wooden roof beams, and the marble wonder burned.
His motive was nakedly simple: lasting fame. Outraged Ephesians executed him and decreed that his name never be spoken again — a damnatio memoriae meant to erase him.
The ban failed spectacularly; ancient writers recorded his name anyway, and “herostratic fame” still describes infamy sought for its own sake.
The temple, counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was rebuilt on an even grander scale. That successor stood for centuries before later destruction, but the original’s fiery end remains history’s classic cautionary tale about the hunger for attention.
Sources & references
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