Copies of Venerable Images
Such an archaic image of wood of the Tauric goddess was stolen by Iphigeneia and Orestes in Iphigeneia in Tauris (lines 1359-59). The importance of the xoanon in local cult ensured that it would be carefully copied when colonies were founded, and sent out with the colonists from the mother-city.
Strabo (4.1) reports that the metropolis Massilia (modern Marseille) was founded by Phocaeans. Their cult of Artemis of Ephesus was transferred with the colony, justified in the founding myth by a dream, and the artistic design of the cult image — Strabo uses the term diathesis (Greek διάθεσις) — was re-exported to Massiliote sub-colonies, "where they keep the diathesis of the xoanon the same, and all the other usages precisely the same as is customary in the mother-city".
Similarly, cementing cultural ties between the Phocaean colony at Massilia and the Phocaean community in Rome, "Among the others, the Romans have consecrated Artemis' xoanon on the Aventine, taking the same model from the Massiliotes" (Strabo, 4.1.5). So the cult image of the Lady of Ephesus, identified as Artemis in Greek understanding, was established as Diana Aventina at Rome, of whom marble copies survive (illustration, left).
Read more about this topic: Xoanon
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