The New Herostratus

By Scott Horton

In the fourth century before the common era, a young man named Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis in the Aegean coastal city of Ephesus (now Efes, Turkey). The massive marble temple had been viewed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. What motivated Herostratus to this horrible deed?

The chroniclers of the event tell us that Herostratus proudly proclaimed his crime, assuming that he had achieved celebrity for all time through it. The authorities of Ephesus not only quickly tried, condemned and executed Herostratus—they also condemned him to obscurity by forbidding the mentioning of his name or the recording of his evil deed. His deed formed the basis for Georg Heym’s poem “The Lunacy of Herostratus” (“Der Wahnsinn des Herostrat”) and Jean-Paul Sartre’s short story “L’Érostrate,” both of which suppose a deranged person aiming to attain fame through a horrible act of violence targeting innocent fellow men.

The tragedy of Blacksburg, Virginia is still fresh and its horror consumes many in America today. But watching pieces of the media package that the young, mentally troubled perpetrator send to NBC last night, I kept thinking of the story of Herostratus. It seems clear that the perpetrator wanted, like Herostratus, to achieve fame through his misdeed. Is it wise for the media to accord him this wish? The elders of Ephesus approached this tragedy with more wisdom than our media, so prone to sensationalism and commercial exploitation, could ever hope to muster. This is a recurrent problem in our society, and we urgently need to apply some simple wisdom to it. I am not advocating censorship. But I wish that our media would demonstrate more discretion when tragedies of this sort strike.