According to a legend, seven persecuted Christian youths fled from Ephesus in the 3rd century A.D. and took refuge in this cave. Agents of the Emperor Decius, a terror to Christians, found the cave and sealed it. Two centuries later an earthquake broke down the wall, awakening the sleepers, and they ambled back to town for a meal. Finding that all of their old friends were long dead, they concluded that they had undergone a sort of resurrection - Ephesus was by this time a Christian city. When they died they were buried in the cave which then became a destination for pilgrimages as well as being a vast Byzantine necropolis; a great many tombs have been discovered here along with inscriptions and markings.