Not only this our craft. — The English word conveys, perhaps, too much the idea of art. Our business, or our interests, would be a somewhat better equivalent. The Greek word is not the same as that so translated in Acts 19:25.
The temple of the great goddess Diana. — The adjective was one specially appropriated to the Artemis of Ephesus, and appears on many of the coins and medals of the city.
Should be despised. — Literally, should come to an exposure — i.e., should become a laughing-stock and a by-word. Panic is sometimes clear-sighted in its previsions, and the coppersmith of Ephesus becomes an unconscious prophet of the future.
And her magnificence should be destroyed. — The connection between the substantive and the received epithet is closer in the Greek than in the English. The great goddess was in danger of being robbed of her attribute of greatness.
Whom all Asia and the world worshippeth. — Asia is, of course, the proconsular province, and the “world” is used conventionally, as in Luke 2:1, for the Roman empire. Apuleius uses language almost identical with that of Demetrius, “Diana Ephesia cujus nomen unicum... totus veneratur orbis.”