Xenophon of Ephesus, An Ephesian Tale 1.2.2 · 1.2.2
The festival of Artemis
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Ἤγετο δὲ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἐπιχώριος ἑορτὴ ἀπὸ τῆς πόλεως ἐπὶ τὸ ἱερόν· στάδιοι δέ εἰσιν ἑπτά· ἔδει δὲ πομπεύειν πάσας τὰς ἐπιχωρίους παρθένους κεκοσμημένας πολυτελῶς καὶ τοὺς ἐφήβους, ὅσοι τὴν αὐτὴν ἡλικίαν εἶχον τῷ Ἁβροκόμῃ. Ἦν δὲ αὐτὸς περὶ τὰ ἓξ καὶ δέκα ἔτη καὶ τῶν ἐφήβων προσήπτετο καὶ ἐν τῇ πομπῇ τὰ πρῶτα ἐφέρετο.
The local festival of Artemis was under way, led in procession from the city to the temple; the distance is seven stades. All the local girls had to march in the procession, richly adorned, and so did the young men who were the same age as Habrocomes. He was about sixteen years old, was counted among the young men, and held first place in the procession.
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The setting
Book 1, chapter 2. Ephesus celebrates the festival of its own goddess, Artemis.
A note on this passage
A stade was about 185 meters, so seven stades is about 1.3 kilometers, or four fifths of a mile. Herodotus gives the same distance between the old city of Ephesus and the temple of Artemis, in his account of the siege by Croesus, when the Ephesians dedicated their city to the goddess by tying a rope from her temple to their wall (Herodotus 1.26). The narrator gives the figure in the present tense, εἰσιν, "it is," as a fact about the place.
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