Herostratus

Herostratus, or Eratostratus (fl. 356 BCE),^[1][a] was an arsonist who destroyed the Temple of Artemis in an attempt to achieve infamy. His name has become an eponym for someone who commits a crime solely to become famous.

An obscure character, Herostratus burned down the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, in 356 BCE. He was swiftly arrested and tortured, during which he confessed his intentions: to gain everlasting fame, shortly before being executed. The arson prompted a damnatio memoriae law barring mention of his name, although many ancient writers, even one contemporary of the arson, documented him. While Herostratus is thought to have been spurred on by resentment at what he saw as societal injustice, his exact motives are not known with any certainty. Modern scholars argue that his crime prefigured modern terrorist acts, including the assassination of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and the September 11 attacks.^[3]

His life and crime have been adapted and discussed extensively in Western literature since the Middle Ages. Works from the likes of Alessandro Verri to Jean-Paul Sartre repurpose him into a fictional character, sometimes in the context of a modern world.

Few details about Herostratus—and none whatsoever of his family, birthdate, residence, job, and place in society—survive.^[4] His identity "is shrouded in mystery except for the name that history attributes to him", in historian Albert Borowitz's words.^[2][b] It is sometimes assumed that he was a citizen of Ephesus, near modern Selçuk, Turkey, but this remains uncertain.^[5] And seeing that his punishment usually only applied to noncitizens, some historians have suggested that Herostratus was non-Ephesian by birth or a slave (or former slave).^[6][c] Some suppose he belonged to a low social standing.^[8]

A modern model of the Temple of Artemis at Miniatürk, Istanbul, Turkey

The temple site in 2017

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was dedicated to the goddess of childbirth and the hunt, among other things.^[9] Resulting from competition with the rival city Samos, it was designed by Chersiphron and Metagenes^[d] and built across 120 years starting around 560 BCE.^[11] Pliny the Elder estimates it surpassed the Parthenon in size by twofold.^[10] Nearly all of it was made of marble, save for such parts as the wooden statue of Artemis and roof.^[12] Ancient sources listed the temple as one of the seven wonders of the world;^[13] Philo of Byzantium and Pliny crowned it "the only house of the gods" and "the most wonderful monument of Græcian magnificence", respectively.^[14]

On the day Alexander the Great was born in 356 BCE,^[e] a man burned the temple down; some historians claim he set its large wooden roof ablaze.^[18] The crime was attributed to an unknown man named Herostratus.^[19] Promptly arrested, he was tortured on the rack, where he confessed to having committed the arson to secure everlasting fame or notoriety.^[20][f] He was then executed.^[22] To thwart his ambition and harden his punishment, Ephesus passed a damnatio memoriae law forbidding anyone from mentioning his name.^[23] The arson shocked and grieved the city and possibly pushed it to the brink of panic.^[24]

There might be gaps in this account. One gap, observes Borowitz, is that Herostratus professed his vainglorious motives under torture instead of "[crying] his name ... to all who would listen".^[25] Torture was often not considered a means of obtaining information.^[26] Also, Ephesians may have suspected that Herostratus' true intention remained concealed, for instance, in the event that Ephesus' enemies had hired him to burn the temple.^[27]

Starting in 323 BCE, the temple was rebuilt, and the resulting structure was larger than before.^[28] The Goths looted and burned it around 262/267 CE, and the temple met its end in 401 CE at the hands of a Christian mob. As of 2017, a sole reassembled column stays standing.^[29]

No piece of evidence indicates Herostratus' motives.^[21] While ancient sources agree that he burned the temple to amass eternal or ubiquitous fame,^[30] they do not definitively conclude why he sought this fame. The leading theory since antiquity suggests he grew resentful at some perceived injustice, he could not attain a good reputation, which led him toward the act.^[31] Greek satirist Lucian proposed for the first time that jealousy or a feeling of mediocrity motivated Herostratus, in that fame would only arrive by burning the Artemision and by no other means: a perversion, says Borowitz, of the Greek world's admiration of honor, bravery, and heroism.^[32] According to Russian poet Semyon Nadson, Herostratus had acknowledged that he was a "maggot squashed by destiny, in the midst of the countless hordes".^[8] Roman historian Valerius Maximus notes Herostratus' penchant for sacrilege as a factor.^[33]

The damnatio memoriae law did not stop numerous ancient writers from documenting Herostratus.^[35] If anything, the law may have guaranteed him posthumous fame, argues Matthew Fraser.^[36] The first to mention him was Theopompus, a Chian historian and contemporary of the arson; he does so in the Philippica.^[37] In a segment titled "Of Appetite for Glory", Valerius Maximus brings up Herostratus' case to demonstrate quests for fame that resort to crime alongside Pausanias', who killed Philip II of Macedon.^[38] His essay was the first to juxtapose Herostratus with a criminal hunt for fame.^[39] Around the second century CE, Lucian named the arson in relation with a later violent act, that is, Peregrinus' self-immolation at the Olympics.^[40]

By the Middle Ages, Herostratus was a familiar name in Europe.^[41] Writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer generally mentioned him to mark unscrupulous quests for celebrity and stressed that fame for wrongdoing often outlives deserved glory.^[42] Invoking the arsonist, the protagonist of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón's 1630 comedy La verdad sospechosa (The Suspicious Truth) reasons that a low public profile makes a person an "animal" and that one must seek out fame by any means necessary.^[43] In his 1699 play Richard III, Colley Cibber paints the English king as fame-thirsty and eager to define himself through unusual methods, and thus he recalls Herostratus' story: "Th'aspiring Youth, that fir'd the Ephesian dome, / Outlives, in Fame, the pious Fool that rais'd it."^[44][g] Beyond literature, an oral tradition revolving around him arose.^[41]

Starting from the Renaissance, Herostratus was a common metonym for someone accused of ruthlessness. Satirist Gabriel Harvey wrote in the late sixteenth century an attack on another author, Robert Greene, likening his libels to the burning of the Artemision.^[46] Thomas Jefferson was also called Herostratic. When he fantasized about grand salt deposits on the Missouri River Louisiana Purchase, one writer understood it as a dream of glory similar to Herostratus'.^[47]

Nineteenth-century literature, writes Borowitz, commenced "the still ongoing process of converting Herostratos from a symbol of destructiveness into a richly imagined personage". Differing from ancient sources, some modern authors supply their account of Herostratus' arson with a background and context. While most rebuke his crime, some indirectly romanticize or abate it by stressing his imagined obscurity and dejection.^[48] Enlightenment writer Alessandro Verri published the first book-length fiction on Herostratus in 1815, La Vita di Erostrato (The Life of Herostratus).^[49] It tells the tale of a man seeking glory who, after constantly having his dreams shattered in failure, grows frustrated and burns the Temple of Artemis.^[50] On the other hand, Romantic and exoticist poetry tends to focus on Herostratus' supposed "joy in destruction or self-destruction" over his hunger for fame.^[51]

Herostratus' legacy has persisted in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Jean-Paul Sartre's short story "Erostratus" concerns Paul Hilbert, who aspires to become a "black hero" in the vein of Herostratus but fails due to his personal weakness.^[52] The 1967 film Herostratus, a critique of a society drenched in advertising that exploits youth, molds the historical figure and event into a tale addressing 1960s society.^[53] Before the forlorn protagonist intends to kill himself, he arranges to make his suicide a media spectacle until a change of mind befalls him.^[54] A recent adaptation, Philipe Arnauld's 2002 La boite à chagrins (Pandora's Box), introduces mass media and the internet, as a serial killer who goes by Herostratus plans to publish images of his murders on the internet; a detective traps him.^[51]

Herostratus' name has become a term for someone who commits a crime to achieve notoriety or self-glorification, and Herostratic fame refers to "fame [sought] at any cost."^[55] According to writer Julia H. Fawcett, he "exemplifies a figure asserting his right to self-definition, one who strikes out against a history to which he is unknown by performing himself back into that history—through whatever means necessary".^[56]

Herostratus is sometimes considered the first terrorist.^[59] Modern terrorists, notes Borowitz, tend to follow his example,^[60][h] hankering for publicity and aspiring to overcome perceived injustice.^[65] Such injustice may be deeply personal and rooted in a diminished sense of meaning or self-worth;^[66] being unloved or confined to an existence without purpose are possible factors, according to James W. Clarke's analysis of assassins.^[67] Many, like Herostratus, are not ideologically or politically committed,^[68] while others are, though at the same time, devoted to fame.^[i] This can lead them to shun their claimed objectives, as seen when jihadist Mohammed Merah murdered three Muslim soldiers in 2012.^[71] Modern acts of terror often forge an appearance of senselessness.^[72][j]

The Herostratic criminal targets a publicly valued symbol, an important person, or multiple people.^[74] To gather celebrity well, in scholars' view, media coverage is required,^[65] such that antitechnology terrorist Ted Kaczynski pledged to halt his bombing campaign if the New York Times and Washington Post published his manifesto.^[75] Driven by an urge to appear in the newspapers and to a far lesser extent, his anarchist leanings, Luigi Lucheni assassinated the Austrian empress Elisabeth,^[76] and during the trial that followed, he acted theatrically and vaingloriously and "blew star's kisses to the audience."^[77] The attorney general made the case for forever wiping out his name.^[78][k] Similarly, Arthur Bremer, desperate for stardom, shot Alabama governor George Wallace in 1972. To him, the choice of victim depended on how much coverage he thought their assassination would garner.^[80] These Herostratic criminals all suffered a troubled past; Lucheni writes that his childhood was deprived of love, and Kaczynski, among other things, faced academic pressure from his parents and trauma from a harrowing college experiment.^[81] But this should not imply that no other factors led them to criminality.^[82]

Following September 11, numerous writers brought up Herostratus' name.^[83] Many of them interpreted the World Trade Center's destruction, a potent symbol of the United States, as a venture for immortality akin to the Artemision's demolition.^[84] Osama bin Laden recorded a video of himself celebrating the terrorist attacks, which Borowitz regards as a tool of self-aggrandizement.^[58] A contemporary commentator wrote, "[The] highlighting of terrorism in mass media is a trigger for the Herostratus phenomenon. Every showing of a shop's explosion, mass murder and falling skyscrapers gives birth to more and more terrorists."^[85] The arson has also been paralleled with the Taliban's destruction of Buddhas in Afghanistan.^[86]

Such criminals who commit repulsive crimes for infamy's sake are consumed by the so-called Herostratus syndrome.^[87] Borowitz lists seven elements constituting the syndrome:

• An appetite for enduring and widespread fame or notoriety to promote a personal sense of power^[88]
• Intending to spark public "panic, distress, insecurity, or loss of confidence"^[89]
• Targeting a famous person, property, or institution^[89]
• Jealousy toward successful people caused by "loneliness, alienation, mediocrity, and failure"^[89]
• Self-destructive behavior after or during the crime's course^[89]
• Sacrilege or iconoclasm^[89]
• Other motives, such as those ideological^[89]

Mental insanity does not necessarily figure in the syndrome, he argues. Instead, someone like Herostratus may perpetrate a crime because they feel that life has been unfair.^[90] Neither is it true that Herostratic criminals must have psychological or pathological features setting them apart from others.^[91]

Philosopher Geoffrey Scarre considers Herostratus to discuss whether posthumous events can make one's life more significant. While noting that he did realize his dream, to secure fame, and thus his meaningless life seemingly gained meaning, Scarre concludes that the arson did not enrich Herostratus' life since "what is remembered about [him] is the pointless stupidity of the man and his project. If his was a strategy for evading absurdity, it was self-defeating in its own absurdity".^[92]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Herostratos.

• Entry of Herostratus in William Smith's 1867 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology

• The dictionary definition of herostratic fame at Wiktionary