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 CITIES VISITED 
 
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 REV.S.LEATHES,M.A 
 
 
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THE 
 
 €xim WxBxUtt tg St. '^unl 
 
 BY THE 
 
 KEV. PROFESSOR STANLEY LEATHES, M.A. 
 
 king's college, LONDON. 
 
 Published under the Direction of the Tract Committee. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 Sotktg for promoting (li^nstian j^ncfoUbgt 
 
 SOLD AT THE DEP0SIT0BIE3, 
 
 77 G^EAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS; 
 
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PRINTED 
 
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 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. DAMASCUS 7 
 
 II. TAESUS 21 
 
 III. ANTIOCH 32 
 
 IV. PHILIPPI 48 
 
 V. THESSALONICA 55 
 
 VI. ATHENS 62 
 
 VII. CORINTH 79 
 
 VIII. EPHESUS 94 
 
 IX. KOME 108 
 
THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 I— DAMASCUS. 
 
 npHERE must have been few places in the 
 -*- world, not even excepting Tarsus, a city in 
 Cilicia, or Jerusalem, the Holy City, that had so 
 much interest for St. Paul, or were so enshrined 
 
 A3 
 
8 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 in his holiest associations, as Damascus ; for it 
 was there that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was 
 "revealed" in him (Gal. i. 16). And there are few 
 cities in the world, not even' excepting Kome or 
 Athens, that can have so much to interest the modern 
 traveller as Damascus. Historically, there is hardly 
 any that can compete with it, as far as antiquity is 
 concerned, for Damascus must have watched the 
 flight of nearly, if not upwards of, forty centuries ; 
 and the testimony of those who have visited it is 
 unanimous as regards the beauty of its geographical 
 situation. 
 
 It may be worth our while to relate briefly some 
 of the principal points of interest, whether in the 
 history or geography of this renowned city. 
 
 The earhest that we know of Damascus — if indeed 
 it can be trusted — is what is told us by Josephus 
 {Ant i. 6), that it was founded by XJz, the son of 
 Aram, the son of Shem, and consequently in the 
 second generation after the Deluge ; but with this 
 exception, the first mention of it is in connection with 
 the history of Abraham, when it was already in 
 existence as a well-known city (Gen. xiv. 15). He 
 is said to have discomfited the confederate kings who 
 had pillaged Sodom to " Hobah, which is on the left 
 hand," that is, to the north, of Damascus. Abraham 
 chased them, as we should say, heyond Damascus. 
 Josephus also mentions a tradition that Abraham 
 
DAMASCUS. 9' 
 
 reigned as king at Damascus, and that a village was 
 shown in the time of his informant, Nicolaus of 
 Damascus, which was called the Habitation of 
 Ahraham. Strange to say, even now, about three 
 miles north of Damascus, there is a spot highly 
 venerated by the Mohammedans, and called "the 
 praying-place of Abraham." Here he is said to 
 have offered thanks to God after the discomfiture 
 of the kings. 
 
 According to the present authorised version of 
 Gen. XV. 2, Abraham's "steward" was one "Eliezer 
 of Damascus." This passage, however, is very 
 obscure, and it can hardly mean that Ehezer was 
 "of Damascus," though the name of that city 
 appears to have been part of his name. In the 
 text there is a play upon the word, inasmuch as 
 Ehezer is called ben-meshek, and the name of 
 the city is dammeseZ; (the s and k are here printed 
 in italics, to distingTiish them from other letters 
 in the Hebrew alphabet which have a similar 
 sound). 
 
 As Abraham was the ninth in generation from 
 Shem, Damascus must have been a place of con- 
 siderable antiquity even in his days, if the account 
 of its foundation which is given by Josephus is 
 true. In fact, this account would make it to be 
 now more than 4000 years since it became a city. 
 Certain it is that whenever the first Aramite 
 
10 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 settlers sought a home in the north-eastern dis- 
 tricts of Syria, Damascus would have been one 
 of the first sites chosen for a city, from the beauty, 
 fertility, and salubriousness which distinguish it. 
 
 After the time of Abraham we do not meet 
 with the name of Damascus in Scripture again 
 for a period of 800 years, until the wars of David. 
 It is not included in the enumeration of territory 
 assigned to Israel (Numb, xxxiv.), and this fact 
 is incidentally a collateral proof of the genuine- 
 ness of the Pentateuch, inasmuch as Damascus did 
 form part of the dominions of Israel in the time 
 of David, Solomon, and Jeroboam II., and a person 
 writing so late as the time of any one of those 
 kings, would have been likely to include it in the 
 promise given to Abraham (Gen. xiii.), or that 
 made by Moses in Numbers. It would surely have 
 been a very tempting opportunity for a writer in 
 the time of David, when he was placing garrisons 
 in Damascene Syria, and the Syrians became his 
 servants and brought gifts, to have represented 
 this brilliant extension of his dominions as the 
 subject of an ancient prophecy, as a fulfilment 
 of some of the earliest promises made to the nation 
 in its infancy. Nothing would have been easier 
 if he could have ventured so to impose upon the 
 national or the royal credulity. That this is not 
 the existmg form of these promises may be taken 
 
DAMASCUS. 11 
 
 as an undesigned indication of their just claim to 
 an earlier date. It is moreover, perhaps, worthy 
 of remark that the writer adds, in connection with 
 this event, that "the Lord preserved David whither- 
 soever he went;" because, in this particular in- 
 stance, he was not carrying out any ostensible or 
 proclaimed intention of God, but was led on by 
 the impulse of conquest and by the natural course 
 of events beyond the original limit of Israelitish 
 dominion. The Syrians of Damascus had come 
 to the succour of Hadad-ezer, who may not im- 
 probably have reigned over "the entering in of 
 Hamath," which was a part of the ideal territory 
 of Israel, and it was in doing this that they were 
 defeated and became "servants to David/' the 
 same remark is placed by the writer of Chronicles 
 in another connection, that namely of David's 
 victories over Edom, but this fact need not lead 
 us to modify what has been said, when we bear 
 in mind the command of Moses with respect to 
 Edom (Deut. ii. 5), a passage, by the way, equally 
 inconsistent with the theory of a late authorship 
 of the Pentateuch. 
 
 The next we hear of Damascus is in the reign 
 of Solomon, and supplemental to this episode of 
 Hadad-ezer ; for it appears that Eezon, the son of 
 Eliadah, had fled from his lord, Hadad-ezer, king 
 of Zobah, after David's victory over liim, and, 
 
12 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 having gathered together a band of men, became 
 captain over them, much in the same way that 
 David himself had done in the time of Saul, and 
 eventually succeeded in establishing himself at Da- 
 mascus and reigning there, either in the latter 
 years of David, or, more probably, in the time 
 of Solomon. By this stroke of successful feudatory 
 warfare, he became "an adversary" to king Solo- 
 mon, and a sworn foe to Israel. 
 
 Damascus also enters into the history of Elijah, 
 and was destined to feel the direct influence of 
 his prophetic mission. After his fit of despondency 
 at mount Horeb, he was bidden first of all to 
 return on his "way to the wilderness of Damascus," 
 and to anoint Hazael to be king over Syria, while 
 at the same time Jehu was to be designated as 
 king of Israel, and Elisha as prophet in his stead. 
 Before this promise was fulfilled, we find the then 
 king of Syria, Ben-hadad, making a compact with 
 Ahab to the effect that he should make "streets" 
 for him in Damascus, as the father of Ben-hadad 
 had made in Samaria : pointing, not improbably, to 
 some sort of commercial treaty or understanding 
 between the two nations. 
 
 Naaman, the Syrian, alludes to the surpassing 
 beauty of the geographical situation of Damascus, 
 in his famous reply to the directions of EUsha 
 concerning his leprosy: "Are not Abana and 
 
DAMASCUS. 13 
 
 Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the 
 waters of Israel ? may I not wash in them, and be 
 clean'?" These rivers are now represented by the 
 Barada and the Awaj, the former of them flowing 
 from the centre of the Anti-Libanus, and the latter 
 from the side of Mount Hermon, and each empty- 
 ing itself into a separate inland lake. 
 
 We are not told that Elijah at any time actually 
 visited Damascus, but Elisha, his successor in the 
 prophetic office, is found there (2 Kings viii. 7); 
 and on this occasion it was that the remarkable 
 interview occurred between him and Hazael, in 
 which the prophet foretold to him, with tears, the 
 atrocities he should execute upon Israel, when with 
 fatal self-ignorance he replied, "Is thy servant a 
 dog, that he should do this great things' 
 
 The brief narrative of the prosperous times of 
 Jeroboam II. is the next that brings Damascus 
 before our notice. We are told that he recovered 
 Damascus and Hamath, which had belonged to 
 Judah, for Israel (2 Kings xiv. 28), in a passage 
 which wonderfully illustrates the essential unity 
 of the divided kingdoms in the mind of the 
 historian. There is in his work no trace of par- 
 tiality for the kingdom of the secession, but for 
 all that he still looks upon the dismembered tribes 
 as an integral portion of a kingdom in idea yet 
 undivided, and the cities which were lost to Judah 
 
14: THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 are still not wholly lost if they are recovered for 
 Israel. Brilliant as this period must have been 
 for the annals of Israel, it is not a little striking 
 that the sacred historian has passed it by with 
 cursory notice, doubtless because it did not furnish 
 material for the more important purposes of his 
 great work. 
 
 The next reference to Damascus is one that 
 shows us the influence of Syrian idolatry upon 
 the chosen people in the time of Ahaz. It ap- 
 pears that Ahaz had found it convenient, — though, 
 indeed, as the issue showed, it was a very short- 
 sighted policy, — to cultivate the friendship and 
 alliance of the king of Assyria, to strengthen him- 
 self against the nearer and threatening power of 
 the king of Syria. In consequence of this friend- 
 ship, Damascus fell under the sword of Tiglath- 
 pileser, and Ahaz hastened to meet the conqueror 
 who had succoured him, within its walls. While 
 he was here the king of Judah saw an altar which 
 pleased him so much that he desired the high- 
 priest Urijah to have one made like it in Jerusalem. 
 It is the more remarkable that Urijah should have 
 hastened to carry out the king's instructions, and 
 should have allowed him even to sacrifice upon 
 the altar, because it would seem that this very 
 Urijah was one of the "faithful witnesses" chosen 
 by the prophet Isaiah (viii. 2) to "record" or attest 
 
DAMASCUS. 15 
 
 his prophecy concerning the birth of his son Maher- 
 shalal-hash-baz. The prophet's selection, however, 
 was probably in consequence of Urijah's official 
 position, and of that alone ; if otherwise, this 
 circumstance is but one instance out of many that 
 serve to show how easy it is for actions that assume 
 their true character and appearance when looked 
 at in the light of subsequent events, to be com- 
 pletely disguised by the influence of contemporary 
 motives and impulses. The actual and intrinsic 
 good and evil are seldom brought into vivid and 
 striking contrast, but commonly shade oif the one 
 into the other, so that the radical difference be- 
 tween them is not discerned. This may serve in 
 some degree to account for the conduct of Urijah ; 
 but in the case of Ahaz there seems to have been 
 a more determined definition, for in the Second 
 Book of Chronicles we are told that "he sacrificed 
 unto the gods of Damascus, who smote him : and 
 he said, Because the gods of the kings of Syria 
 help them, therefore will I sacrifice to them, that 
 they may help me." In connection with this 
 apostasy, we read of many captives being taken 
 to Damascus, as some years before, in the reign 
 of Joash, the spoil of the princes of Judah had 
 likewise been sent thither. In those days it was 
 doubtless a dreaded name to Israel and Judah, 
 second only to that of the Assyrian power. 
 
16 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 This is the last time that Damascus comes before 
 us in the historical books of the Old Testament. 
 There are many allusions to it ia the poetry of 
 the prophets. In Canticles we read of "the tower 
 of Lebanon, which looketh toward Damascus." 
 Isaiah had the courage to predict, even at the 
 time when Ahaz was coquetting with the idols of 
 Syria, that ''the riches of Damascus . . . should 
 be taken away before" the monarch of the North, 
 "the kiug of Assyria" (viii. 4). He represents 
 the king of Assyria as putting Samaria and Da- 
 mascus in the same category of vanquished cities 
 {x. 9) that formed the glory of his "princes," who 
 were "altogether kings." His seventeenth chapter 
 contains "the burden of Damascus," in which he 
 declares that it "is taken away from being a city, 
 and shall be a ruinous heap," and that "the king- 
 dom shall cease from it." Jeremiah takes up the 
 same strain, saying, in the name of the Lord, 
 "I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and 
 it shall consume the palaces of Ben-hadad." He 
 pictures Damascus as a beautiful woman, fleeing 
 from the sword of the conqueror. "Damascus is 
 waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee, and fear 
 hath seized on her : anguish and sorrows have taken 
 her, as a woman in travail. How," he exclaims, 
 "is the city of praise not left, the city of my joy!" 
 EzeMel recounts Damascus among the merchants 
 
DAMASCUS. 17 
 
 of Tyre, her chief articles of commerce being "the 
 wiue of Helbon and white wool." Amos, the con- 
 temporary of Isaiah, writes : "Thus saith the Lord ; 
 For three transgressions of Damascus, .and for four, 
 I mil not turn away the punislnnent thereof; be- 
 cause they have threshed Gilead with threshing 
 instruments of iron": uttering the very threat 
 which was afterwards repeated by Jeyemiah. Final- 
 ly, Zechariah has an obscure allusion to Damascus 
 as being the "rest" of the land of Hadrach, or of 
 the burden of the Word of the Lord, "when the 
 eyes of man, as of all the tribes of Israel, shall 
 be toward the Lord" (chap. ix. 1). 
 
 Little is known of Damascus from the sources 
 of secular history after its conquest by Tiglath- 
 pileser, when it became a "tributary of the Assyrian 
 kings ; but it probably followed the fortunes of 
 Assyria, and passed under the rule of the Modes 
 and Persians. It was still the principal city of 
 Syria till after its conquest by Alexander, when 
 it was eclipsed in importance by Antioch, which 
 was built by his successors. In the war between 
 Pompey and Mithridates it fell under the dominion 
 of the Eomans, and in the time of the Apostle 
 Paul was held by Aretas under them. The con- 
 nection of Aretas with Damascus, however, at this 
 period, is a matter of considerable difficulty. Aretas 
 was father-in-law of Herod Antipas ; his own 
 
 B 
 
18 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 capital was Petra, and lie liad for some time war 
 with Antipas on account of his daughter having 
 been divorced by him for the sake of Herodias. 
 A battle was fought, wliich resulted in the total 
 overthrow of Antipas ; whereupon he applied to 
 Tiberius for help, who sent Vitelhus, governor of 
 Syria, to his aid. While, however, this general 
 was on the ?jiarch, he heard of the death of 
 Tiberius, and retired to Antioch : thus leaving 
 Damascus open, at any rate for a tin;ie, to the 
 advance of Aretas, who appears to have availed 
 himself of the opportunity. It was while the 
 governor (or ethnarch), under this Aretas, "kept 
 the city of the Damascenes with a garrison," that 
 the converted Saul was "let down by the wall in 
 a basket" (2 Cor. xi. 32, 33). 
 
 After this time its fortunes ceased to be con- 
 spicuous till the memorable year 634 a. D., when 
 the Mohammedan army entered its gates. Thirty 
 years afterwards it became the capital of the 
 Omeiade caliphs, and the centre of a vast empire, 
 extending from Persia to Spain, until, in the year 
 750 A.D., they were supplanted by the Abbasside 
 dynasty, who transferred the seat of government to 
 Baghdad. In the period of the Crusades, Damas- 
 cus was the capital of the illustrious Saladin, the 
 contemporary of our Eichard the First. After- 
 wards, in the 14th century, Damascus fell under 
 
DAMASCUS. 19 
 
 the scourge of Timur or Tamerlane, who is justly 
 denominated by Arab writers "the wild beast." 
 He destroyed its libraries, dissipated its wealth, 
 scattered its manufactures, carrying off its far- 
 famed sword-cutlers to Ispahan, and put its in- 
 habitants to the sword. A century later Damascus 
 fell into the hands of the Turks, and it is still 
 subject to the Sultan. Such have been the varied 
 fortunes of this famous city during the period of 
 four thousand years. 
 
 From the history of the Acts, it is plain that 
 the preaching of the Gospel very early found a 
 home at Damascus, otherwise Saul would not have 
 been despatched thither to bring the men and 
 women of "the way" bound unto Jerusalem. It 
 was when the city walls must have been visible 
 in the distance to the band of travellers, that the 
 bright light from heaven shone round about him, 
 and he fell to the earth with the voice and name 
 of the persecuted Jesus sounding in his ears. There 
 was something providential in the choice of this 
 particular place and time for the scene and hour 
 of his conversion. For being naturally taken to 
 Damascus, his connection was severed with his 
 former companions at Jerusalem, and he fell at 
 once into the influence of the very society that 
 he came to persecute. The path of his transition 
 to the faith of Christ was thus smoothed. Old 
 
 b2 
 
20 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 ties being broken, new ones were more easily 
 formed, and forthwith "he preached Christ in the 
 synagogues, that He is the Son of God." It is 
 indeed a question where we are to place this 
 "preaching," with regard to the visit to Arabia 
 mentioned in the first chapter of the Epistle to 
 the Galatians. He says himself that "immediately" 
 after his conversion he went into Arabia, and re- 
 turned again to Damascus ; in which case we must 
 suppose that the visit to Arabia took place before 
 the "certain days" that "he was with the disciples 
 which were at Damascus" (Acts ix. 19). It is a 
 remarkable fact that in the city where "he con- 
 founded the Jews, .... proving that this is very 
 Christ," the Greek inscription still read over the 
 principal door of the great mosque, which for 
 upwards of a thousand years has been in the 
 possession of the Moslems, but in the time of Con- 
 stantine was a church dedicated to John the 
 Baptist, should run as follows: "Thy kmgdom, 
 Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy 
 dominion is from generation to generation." 
 
21 
 
 II.— TAESUS. 
 
 NONE of us can shake off the associations of our 
 youth. The lessons that are learnt in childhood 
 are the last that are forgotten. A man's real 
 
22 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 education commences, not at college or at school, 
 but at his mother's knee. The influences of home 
 are deeper and more permanent than any other. 
 And that which constitutes an education is by 
 no means exclusively, or even principally, our 
 familiarity with books, but our intercourse with 
 men, the companions with whom we associate, the 
 examples that are placed before us, the situations 
 we are thrown into, and even the natural scenery 
 we behold habitually. The influence received by 
 these things is undoubtedly proportionate to the 
 plasticity of our minds ; but in youth every one's 
 mind is more or less plastic, and has a tendency 
 to receive impressions, like the soft wax beneath the 
 signet. Thus there is probably no great character 
 of history who has not been moulded, consciously 
 or unconsciously, by the scenes of his childhood 
 and the places in which his earliest years were 
 passed. 
 
 Teachers in schools cannot too carefully re- 
 member this. For it is impossible to calculate 
 the influences there at work. Some incident or 
 lesson may leave a mark that is absolutely in- 
 delible. Memory is always capricious, and the 
 things which remain with us are oftentimes not 
 those which, in themselves, are the most important, 
 or the most impressive. Who can tell, therefore, 
 what may not be the ultimate efiect of influence 
 
TARSUS. 23 
 
 exerted, of example set, and of manners and habits 
 cultivated in the school? 
 
 Few persons have been destined to exercise a 
 wider or more permanent influence upon mankind 
 than the Apostle Paul. Judged by the abiding 
 results of his work, he is undeniably one of the 
 greatest men the world has ever seen. And this is 
 not merely the Christian estimate of his character ; 
 for his influence on the Christian world is a fact 
 which is as patent to those who are not Christians, 
 as to those who are. The value set upon the work 
 will, of course, differ, but the work itself must 
 remain the same. 
 
 Tarsus, which is known as the birthplace of this 
 great Apostle, was a city of Cilicia, a province of 
 Asia Minor, at the south-eastern angle of that 
 peninsula, where it abuts on Syria. It was situated 
 on the river Cydnus, which flowed through it, and 
 divided it into two parts, as the Thames divides 
 London, and as Paris is divided by the Seine. 
 From Tarsus to the sea the distance is some ten 
 or twelve miles. In ancient times the river was na- 
 vigable as far as Tarsus, but at present only the 
 smallest boats can pass the bars which have been 
 formed by the deposit brought down by the stream. 
 Inside the bar, however, the river is deep, and 
 somewhat less than two hundred feet in width. The 
 water is cold and the current swift. Alexander the 
 
24 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 Great nearly lost his life from a fever, cauglit by 
 plunging into the Cydnns to bathe when he 
 was greatly heated. In spring-time the stream is 
 swollen, from the snows which it carries down from 
 the range of the Taurus mountains, that rise in 
 grand and magnificent variety, and form an im- 
 posing background to the city. 
 
 In a place, then, of this character it was that 
 Saul of Tarsus passed his youth. He was of pure 
 Hebrew blood, and his family was one of many 
 Jewish families that resided at Tarsus. From the 
 first dawn of consciousness he must have gazed on 
 the Taurus mountains, rich with the many hues 
 of sunrise and sunset, and their beautiful alterna- 
 tions of light and shade ; and often, as a boy, he 
 may have played on the banks of the Cydnus, and 
 perhaps bathed in its cold and turbid waters. As 
 yet he was all unconscious of the mighty destiny 
 that lay before him ; but we may well believe that 
 the voice of God in nature spoke to him even thus 
 early through the noble mountain scenery of his 
 native town. 
 
 Tarsus, though built at the foot of a mountain 
 chain, was situated in a fertile plain, and, from its 
 connection with the sea, was the meeting-point of 
 several of the high roads of Cilicia : it was the 
 principal city of the province, and, in fact, one of 
 the most important places in Asia Minor. The first 
 
TARSUS. 25 
 
 historical mention of Tarsus is in connection with 
 the march of the younger Cyrus. Xenophon de- 
 scribes it as a great and wealtliy city, in an exten- 
 sive and fruitful plain, at the foot of the mountain 
 passes, known as the Cilician gates, leading to 
 Cappadocia and Lycaonia. At that time it was the 
 residence of the king of Cilicia, who was a subject 
 of the Court of Persia, and being but a dubious ally 
 of Cyrus, on his arrival at Tarsus the city was 
 given over to plunder. Ultimately, however, a treaty 
 was concluded, and Cyrus remained there for 
 twenty days. Afterwards, in the time of Alexan- 
 der's victorious march through Asia Minor, the 
 Satrap of Persia, who was the governor of the city, 
 fled at his approach, and Tarsus once more fell 
 victim to the forces of the stranger. Alexander was 
 prevented from continuing his march, because of his 
 fever, and was laid up here till he was sufficiently 
 recovered to proceed. After the fall of Alexander, 
 Tarsus, with the province to which it belonged, was 
 included in the Syrian kingdom of the Seleucidae ; 
 but for a short time it was subject to Egypt, under 
 the second and third Ptolemy. Tarsus passed from 
 the dominion of the East to that of Western Eome, 
 under Pompey ; but, in the war between him and 
 Caesar, it took the part of the latter, for which it 
 was punished and plundered by Cassius. Subse- 
 quently it was indebted to Mark Antony for the 
 
26 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 privilege of municipal freedom. Here it was tliat 
 Antony received Cleopatra, as she sailed np the 
 Cydnus in a gorgeous boat, impersonating the God- 
 dess of Beauty. As Shakespeare says — 
 
 " For her own person, 
 It beggared all description : she did lie 
 In her pavilion— cloth of gold of tissue— 
 O'er-picturing that Venus where we see 
 The fancy outwork nature : on each side her 
 Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, 
 "With divers coloured fans, whose wind did seem 
 To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, 
 And what they undid did." 
 
 Still further advantages were conferred on the 
 city by Augustus, and it is designated on coins as 
 libera civitas. Under the empire it played a promi- 
 nent part in the wars of Eome with the Parthians 
 and Persians. Several of the later emperors died 
 at Tarsus ; and Julian the Apostate was buried in 
 one of its suburbs. The city maintained its wealth 
 and importance till it fell under the power of the 
 Saracens. Once only was it taken from them by the 
 Emperor Nicephorus; but they soon recovered it, 
 and have held possession of it to the present time, 
 in the persons of their representatives, the Turks. 
 The modern name of it is Tersoos. 
 
 Not only for commerce was the ancient city 
 famous, but also for its schools of learning. Under 
 the early Koman emperors it was a celebrated place 
 of education ; and by some was ranked second only 
 to Athens and Alexandria. It was the residence of 
 
TAESUS. 27 
 
 several eminent Stoic philosophers, among others 
 the tutors both of Augustus and Tiberius. 
 
 This is about all that we are able to glean as 
 to the historical and local description of the well- 
 known city of Cilicia. We pass now to its more 
 immediate connection with St. Paul. 
 
 At what age St. Paul left Tarsus we do not 
 know. In later times it was at five that a Hebrew 
 boy had to study the Bible, at ten the Mishna, at 
 fifteen the Talmud. It can hardly have been before 
 he was fourteen or fifteen that the youthful Saul 
 would have been sent so far from home as to the 
 Holy City, and his bringing-up at the feet of 
 Gamaliel would probably not begin much before 
 he was that age. Whether he returned to the 
 home of his youth after his education was com- 
 pleted is not certain, but very probable. There is 
 no evidence of his having been resident in Jerusalem 
 during the period of our Lord's ministry ; but after 
 the day of Pentecost and the birth of the Christian 
 Church, he was energetically occupied there as a 
 strict and zealous Pharisee. Then came his con- 
 version, when — as, according to an ancient tradi- 
 tion, he was born the second year after Christ — 
 he may have been perhaps from thirty to five-and- 
 thirty, which was followed by the three years he 
 spent in Arabia, and the time that he preached at 
 Damascus. 
 
28 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 It is plain that his connection with Tarsus cannot 
 have been wholly broken, because it was to Tarsus 
 that the disciples forthwith sent him, after, having 
 escaped from Damascus, he had attempted unsuc- 
 cessfully to mingle with the Jerusalem Christians, 
 whom he had before persecuted. They looked 
 naturally to his earliest home as the most eligible 
 place of refuge for him to flee to (Acts ix. 30). The 
 relation of Paul to Tarsus corresponds to that of 
 Andrew to Simon in the Gospel history; having 
 himself discovered the Messiah, the first person 
 Andrew was anxious to bring to Him was his own 
 brother. So we find Syria and Cilicia prominent 
 among the regions that Paul visited and revisited. 
 It was his brethren in the flesh after whom he 
 ardently longed, that he might bring them unto 
 Christ. 
 
 While the Apostle was at Tarsus, during this 
 visit of unknown length, Barnabas, who had intro- 
 duced him to the elders at Jerusalem, came thither 
 to seek for him. The character of Barnabas, 
 briefly as it is sketched in the Acts of the Apostles, 
 is one of great nobleness and generosity, and it 
 must have been specially attractive to a man of 
 St. Paul's character, and specially ready to find a 
 friend in him. We know the closeness of their 
 intimacy up to the moment of one sad breach — how 
 they went hand-in-hand together in preaching the 
 
TARSUS. 29 
 
 Gospel of their common Master all tlirougli the first 
 apostolical journey. And it is gratifying to be able 
 to believe that, years afterwards, their union was 
 restored. We hear no more of Barnabas in the 
 apostolic record ; but in the First Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, ix. 6, St. Paul himself speaks of him 
 as he would hardly have done had the breach still 
 continued. And this Epistle was written perhaps 
 after an interval of five or six years from that event. 
 It is, indeed, hardly conceivable that a contention, 
 however sharp at one time, would have been suf- 
 fered to rankle in the breasts of two such loyal 
 servants of Jesus Christ as Paul and Barnabas, 
 even though the immediate cause of it may have 
 been, as it not improbably was, a question of prin- 
 ciple. From Col. iv. 10, and 2 Tim. iv. 11, we find, 
 moreover, that Paul was reconciled to Mark, who 
 had been the occasion of the quarrel ; and from 
 this alone we might well assume that his breach 
 with Barnabas was at an end. 
 
 St. Paul left Tarsus with Barnabas for Antioch, 
 and remained there for a whole year, during which 
 time it would seem that the disciples first acquired 
 the name of Christians. There is no mention made 
 of any visit to Tarsus during their first apostolical 
 journey ; but a reference to the map v,i\\ show that 
 they were not far from it when at Derbe, being 
 separated only by the Taurus mountaios. It seems 
 
30 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 not unnatural to suppose tliat a predilection for 
 parts familiar to the Apostle in youth may have 
 had something to do with the early scene of his 
 labours being laid in this part of Asia Minor. As 
 Syria and Cilicia are especially mentioned in the 
 second apostolical journey, Tarsus was, in all 
 probability, included : at the same time it is ob- 
 servable that the associations of the new man 
 everywhere predominate. Ties much stronger have 
 been created with Derbe and Lystra than any that 
 bind him to the city of his natural birth. Thus, in 
 his own history, he illustrates the truth of his words 
 to Corinth : " If any man be in Christ, he is a new 
 creature : old things are passed away ; behold, all 
 things are become new." Whether he ever visited 
 Tarsus at any later period of his life does not 
 appear. It is conceivable that he may have done so, 
 though the occasion for it is by no means plain. 
 In Acts xviii. 23 he can, indeed, scarcely have failed 
 to visit Tarsus, unless he had some object in omit^ 
 ting it which does not appear, and is inconsistent 
 with other considerations. 
 
 The Apostle's " freedom" is a point that deserves 
 to be briefly mentioned. He was not free because 
 of the privileges bestowed on Tarsus by Antony or 
 Augustus. Subsequently the city did, indeed, be- 
 come a Roman colonia, in right of which its citizens 
 would have been born free ; but Paul's free birth 
 
TARSUS. 31 
 
 must have arisen from other causes, though we do 
 not know what they were. It is manifest that he 
 did not draw tliis privilege from his birthplace, 
 because, in the twenty-first chapter of the Acts, 
 ver. 39, before the attempt is made to scourge him, 
 he professes himself a native of Targus, the mere 
 mention of which fact would have been sufficient 
 protection, had its citizens been free. He probably 
 inherited the right from his father, or one of his 
 ancestors, who had acquired it, either for services 
 rendered to the state, or by purchase. In the con- 
 sequences of the fact, as they must have made 
 themselves felt in St. Paul, we can only discern an 
 instance of the Providence of God in permittuag 
 them to operate in the life of one who was chosen 
 to be so marked an instrument of His glory, so 
 that, doubtless, in many w^ays his usefulness was 
 increased and his safety guaranteed. 
 
32 
 
 
 III.— ANTIOCH. 
 
 THE next city visited by St. Paul which demands 
 our attention is the Syrian Antioch. To Christians 
 there are few, if any, cities that can possess greater 
 interest. Jerusalem was, of course, "the mother of 
 us all," as being the birthplace of the new society, 
 and as representing the old society which it super- 
 but in Antioch the name of Christian was 
 
ANTIOCH. 33 
 
 first heard (Acts xi. 26), the name wliich, being 
 Gentile in its formation, was applied perhaps in the 
 first instance chiefly to Gentiles, or at least to Jews 
 with a considerable admixture of Gentiles (Acts xi. 
 20, 21); so that if Jerusalem was necessarily the 
 mother of the Jewish Christian Church, Antioch 
 was emphatically the mother of the Gentile Church. 
 It was the first city of the Gentile world in which 
 the new faith took root; and as it is a pleasure to 
 most of us to revisit in after life the place of our 
 birth, so must it be a pleasure to Christians in 
 these last days of the mature gro\\iih of Christianity 
 to review the history of a place like Antioch, and 
 to trace the features of its geographical position. 
 
 In our notice of Tarsus, we had occasion to speak 
 of the Taurus mountains, at the foot of which that 
 city lay. A traveller who followed the Taurus 
 range in an easterly direction would eventually be 
 arrested by the chain of mount Amanus, which, 
 reaching to the south, confronts the Lebanon, and 
 is divided from it by the river Orontes, which, 
 bursting through these two mountain chains in a 
 south-westerly direction, after flowing northwards 
 for many miles between the Libanus and Anti- 
 libanus, empties itself into the sea not far from 
 Seleucia, the port of Antioch. At this point, and on 
 the left bank of the river, stood the city of Antioch. 
 It was formerly called, in consequence, Antioch by 
 
34 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 the Orontes, and also, from its being at a distance 
 of about five miles from a celebrated grove and 
 sanctuary of Apollo so named, Antiocb by Dapbne. 
 Antioch has been compared to Paris, and Daphne 
 to its Versailles. Of this so-called suburb of An- 
 tioch, Gibbon says : — " The Macedonian kings of 
 Syria had consecrated to Apollo one of the most 
 elegant places of devotion in the Pagan world. A 
 magnificent temple rose in honour of the god of 
 light. The temple and the village were deeply 
 bosomed in a thick grove of laurels and cypresses, 
 which reached as far as a circumference of ten miles, 
 and formed, in the most sultry summers, a cool and 
 impenetrable shade. A thousand streams of the 
 purest water, issuing from every hill, preserved the 
 verdure of the earth and the temperature of the 
 air; the senses were gratified with harmonious 
 sounds and aromatic odours," and so forth. The 
 neighbourhood and the celebrity of this asylum of 
 Apollo, which is mentioned in 2 Mace. iv. as the 
 place in which Onias the high priest took refuge 
 from Menelaus, who had usurped that office, and 
 whom he had reproved for having taken certain 
 vessels of gold from the temple, contributed not a 
 little to the fame of Antioch ; and being for cen- 
 turies a place of idolatrous pilgrimage, it was noted 
 for its great licentiousness, in the reputation of wliich 
 Antioch likewise naturally participated. This fact, 
 
ANTIOCH. 35 
 
 taken in connection with the subsequent spread of 
 Christianity from this city as a centre, is remark- 
 able, and finds its parallel in the similar case of 
 Corinth. 
 
 The foundation of Antioch and its suburb of 
 Daphne dates from the year 300 B.C. They were 
 both built by Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the 
 Syrian monarchy, and the most powerful of the 
 direct successors of Alexander the Great. In the 
 temple at Daphne he placed a colossal statue of 
 Apollo, composed of marble and wood, and repre- 
 senting that divinity with a harp, as if in the act 
 of singing. To the worship of Apollo, Antiochus 
 Epiphanes addel that of Jupiter, and erected in 
 honour of him a colossal statue of ivory and gold. 
 Thus Daphne, which was almost a part of Antioch, 
 and to which the city owed so much of its fame, 
 was prominent as a focus of Pagan and licentious 
 worship. Baths, gardens, and colonnades arose on 
 every side, and made the spot reno^vned for its 
 consummate luxury and splendour. The ancient 
 Antioch was built partly on an island in the 
 Orontes — which appears to exist no longer, and 
 was, therefore, perhaps artificial — partly on the left 
 bank of the river, and partly on the slope of a spur 
 of the Lebanon range. It was situate at the extreme 
 upper corner of Syria, and almost as far noiih of 
 Damascus as Damascus was north of Jerusalem; 
 
 c2 
 
36 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 but, while the history of Damascus reaches far back 
 into the earliest times of the Old Testament, that 
 of Antioch does not commence till more than a 
 hundred years after its close. The new and aspiring 
 rival, however, for a time outstripped its ancient 
 compeer, and w^as reckoned as the capital of Syria ; 
 but Damascus has more, than avenged herself in 
 the present day; for, while Antioch is a small and 
 insignificant town, vdth hardly a vestige of her 
 former glory, Damascus is still in some respects 
 a flourishing city, with a population from twenty 
 to thirty times as large. 
 
 Antioch itself is distant from the sea-coast about 
 sixteen miles, but the course that the river takes is 
 so winding as to be rather more than forty. The 
 nearest point on the sea-coast to Antioch would be 
 the port of Seleucia, about five miles from the mouth 
 of the Orontes. Here it was that Paul and Bar- 
 nabas, "being sent forth by the Holy Ghost," 
 embarked for Cyprus on their first missionary 
 journey. Acts xiii. 4 ; and here, on their return, they 
 would naturally land, xiv. 26. In the palmy days 
 of the Syrian monarchy, Antioch was considered, 
 and must have been, very beautiful. It was called 
 "beautiful Antioch." The Orontes, which flowed 
 through it, has been compared to the Wye. The 
 mountains at the back of it rose to the height of 
 5000 feet, and all that art could do to improve and 
 
ANTIOCH. 37 
 
 beautify a spot so highly favoured by nature was 
 profusely done. It is probable, however, that the 
 modern features of the site have undergone some 
 modification, in consequence of the earthquakes 
 which have at all times been its scourge. Never- 
 theless, the position is still a charming one, and the 
 climate is delightfully tempered by the sea breezes. 
 The river was navigable to the sea, and thus com- 
 manded the commerce of the Mediterranean ; and 
 its deep and rapid waters flowed through banks 
 that were clad with the vine and the fig-tree, the 
 sycamore, the myrtle, and the bay. 
 
 It was among such pleasant lines as these that 
 the early Church was cradled, and hence there 
 sallied forth the " beautiful feet " of those who were 
 to bring glad tidings of great joy to the whole 
 Gentile world. It is pleasant to think of the happy 
 hours among pleasant scenes of natural beauty that 
 must have been passed here by the infant Church, 
 in unconscious preparation for her deadly struggle 
 with the vice and darkness of heathenism. It seems 
 to remind us of happy times of recreation we may 
 have passed ourselves in the intervals of anxious 
 toil, or on the eve of some special trial. These 
 things were ordained by God to strengthen us for 
 the coming conflict, to refresh us in the midst of it, 
 or to store the memory with happier recollections 
 in the painful future. And it may surely have been 
 
38 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 SO with those who were first called Christians. We 
 can well believe that St. Paul, when in prison at 
 Caesarea or Kome, may have turned with grateful 
 reminiscences to the contemplation of hours passed 
 with faithful brethren amid the groves of Antioch 
 or the mountain terraces of Daphne. It is true 
 that the Apostolic record says nothing about this ; 
 but these things may well have been among the 
 natural and necessary human details that every 
 reader could supply for himself. If he spoke of 
 the "rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling 
 our hearts with gladness," and "witnessing" for 
 God, we can, without constraint, suppose him to 
 have been not insensible to the Divine messages of 
 natural beauty. 
 
 Antioch has been falsely identified with the Eiblah 
 of the Old Testament. It is plain that, under any 
 circumstances, it could only be its modern repre- 
 sentative, from the fact mentioned above of its 
 subsequent foundation. But Eiblah occupied, in all 
 probability, an entirely different site further south, 
 and near the source of the Orontes, where there is 
 still a village with an almost identical name. 
 
 The situation of Antioch was chosen by Seleucus, 
 not only on account of its access to the commerce of 
 the great western sea, but also because it was open 
 to communication with the Euphrates on the east, 
 and with Egypt on the south. As it was in the case 
 
ANTIOCH. 39 
 
 of the foundation of Kome, he is said to have been 
 guided by the flight of birds to his choice of the 
 locality, an eagle having carried the flesh of the 
 sacrifice to the spot, a circumstance which is some- 
 times indicated on the coins of Antioch. The city, 
 which was built and colonised by Seleucus, was 
 considerably enlarged by liis successors, till, after 
 the additions made to it by Antiochus Epiphanes, 
 it acquired from its form the name of Tetrapolis, as 
 it consisted of four distinct divisions, which, though 
 separated from each other, were inclosed by a 
 common wall. When Syria fell under the dominion 
 of the Komans and the arms of Pompey, B.C. 64, 
 Antioch was favoured ^\ith the privilege of self- 
 government — a privilege which was afterwards re- 
 newed by Julius Caesar; and it became the chief 
 city of the Koman pro\inces in Asia, and was 
 reckoned the third city in the empire, next, in 
 magnitude and importance, to Kome and Alexan- 
 dria. It is computed to have been not much infe- 
 rior in size to modern Paris; and the splendour of 
 its public buildings was very great, from the fact of 
 the kings of Syria having vied with one another in 
 lavisliing their wealth upon it. 
 
 From the first, Antioch was the residence of a 
 large number of Jews, who were treated with equal 
 privileges with the other inhabitants ; they were even 
 allowed by the Eomans to have a governor of their 
 
40 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 own. In the time of Demetrius Soter, Idng of 
 Syria, the Jews, under Jonathan the Maccabee, were 
 the means of rescuing him from an insurrection of 
 his own citizens, and slew in the streets of x\ntioch 
 a hundred thousand men (1 Mace. xi. 47). As this 
 was only about a century and a half after tlie 
 foundation of the city, it gives ns some notion of 
 its prosperity and numerical magnitude. This cir- 
 cumstance of Antioch being a favoured residence of 
 the Jews, accounts, no doubt, in a great degree, 
 for its being, next to Jerusalem, the chief cradle of 
 the Christian Church. 
 
 Among the greatest benefactors of Antioch during 
 the Syrian period was Antiochus Epiphanes, who 
 built a senate-house, a temple, and a street four 
 miles long, extending from east to west, with double 
 colonnades, which, in spite of natural inequalities 
 in the ground, was made, like the Holborn Viaduct, 
 perfectly level. Under the Romans also the city 
 was greatly adorned, not only by Julius and Au- 
 gustus Caesar, who favoured and were flattered by 
 the people of Antioch, but likewise by Herod the 
 Great and Herod Agrippa. To these names may 
 be added also those of Caligula, Trajan, Hadrian, 
 Antoninus Pius, Commodus, and Diocletian. Ger- 
 manicus Caesar, the nephew of Tiberius and brother 
 of the Emperor Claudius, died at Daphne, the suburb 
 of Antioch, in the year 19 A.D. In the reign of 
 
ANTIOCII. 41 
 
 Trajan the city was visited by a terrible earthquake, 
 from which the emperor, who was then staying there, 
 took refuge in the circus. The next important event 
 in the history of the city was the seizure of it by the 
 Persians under Sapor, a.d. 260. "So rapid were 
 the motions of the Persian cavalry," says Gibbon, 
 " that the city of Antioch was surprised when the 
 idle multitude was fondly gazing on the amusements 
 of the theatre. The splendid buildings of Antioch, 
 private as well as public, were either pillaged or 
 destroyed; and the numerous inhabitants were put 
 to the sword, or led away into captivity." Six times 
 in the space of less than two hundred years was the 
 city almost destroyed by earthquakes: by one that 
 occurred in the year a.d. 526, no less than a quarter 
 of a million of persons are said to have perished, and 
 the emperor Justinian paid an enormous sum of 
 money to restore the city. On this occasion the 
 number of its inhabitants was swelled by a large 
 multitude of strangers w^ho had assembled to com- 
 memorate the festival of the Ascension. But a few 
 years afterwards, a.d. 540, almost before the city had 
 recovered from this disaster, it again fell a prey 
 to fire and sword under the Persian conqueror, 
 Chosroes I. Of this calamity Gibbon says : " The 
 cathedral of Antioch was indeed preserved by the 
 avarice, not the piety of the conqueror : a more 
 honourable exemption was granted to the church of 
 
42 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 St. Julian, and the quarter of the town where the 
 ambassadors resided ; some distant streets were saved 
 by the shifting of the wind, and the walls still sub- 
 sisted to protect, and soon to betray, their new 
 inhabitants." 
 
 In the next century, a.d. 611, a similiar fate befel 
 Antioch under the second Chosroes; and in a.d. 658 
 the city was taken by the Saracens. To quote once 
 more from the greatest of historians : " Her safety 
 was ransomed with three hundred thousand pieces of 
 gold ; but the throne of the successors of Alexander, 
 the seat of the Eoman government in the East, 
 which had been decorated by Csesar with the titles 
 of free, and holy, and inviolate, was degraded under 
 the yoke of the Caliphs to the secondary rank of a 
 provincial town." For a period of more than three 
 centuries this continued to be the condition of Anti- 
 och under Moslem rule, till in a.d. 975 the Emperor 
 of the East, Nicephorus Phocas, recovered the city. 
 " Instead of assaulting the walls of Antioch," says 
 Gibbon, "the humanity or superstition of Nicephorus 
 appeared to respect the ancient metropolis of the 
 East : he contented himself with drawing round the 
 city a line of circumvallation, left a stationary army, 
 and instructed his lieutenant to expect, without 
 impatience, the return of spring. But in the depth 
 of winter, in a dark and rainy night, an adventurous 
 subaltern, with three hundred soldiers, approached 
 
ANTIOCII. 43 
 
 the rampart, applied his scaling-ladders, occupied 
 two adjacent towers, stood firm against the pressure 
 of multitudes, and bravely maintained his post till 
 he was relieved by the tardy though effectual support 
 of his reluctant chief. The first tumult of rapine 
 and slaughter subsided ; the reign of Caesar and of 
 Christ was restored ; and the efforts of an hundred 
 thousand Saracens, of the armies of Syria and the 
 fleets of Africa, were consumed without effect before 
 the walls of Antioch." Antioch, however, in her. 
 varied fortunes, was destmed not long to call herself 
 Christian. In a.d. 1080, it was betrayed by the 
 son of the governor, Philaretus, into the hands of 
 Soliman; but in a.d. 1097, it again sustained a 
 siege by the Crusaders, under Kobert, Duke of 
 Normandy, who entered the gates at the head of 
 three hundred thousand men. The history of this 
 siege and its results is best read in the 58th chapter 
 of Gibbon's great w^ork. Suffice it to say that, as 
 the citadel still held out, the Christians were in 
 their turn besieged by a fresh host of Saracens, 
 whom, however, after a desperate struggle, they 
 defeated. Once more, in the thirteenth century, 
 A.D. 1268, Antioch was attacked and ruined by the 
 Mamelukes under Bibars, the Sultan of Egypt and 
 Syria, and many thousands of her inhabitants were 
 taken captive and put to the sword. In the middle 
 of the fifteenth century Antioch was the scene of 
 
44 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 the entire renunciation, on the part of the Greek 
 Church, of communion with that of Eome, by a 
 synod which was convened there by the Patriarchs 
 of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. 
 
 In the present time Antioch is still called Antikia, 
 and belongs to the jurisdiction of Aleppo, now called 
 Haleb. In 1822 there was a great earthquake 
 there, which destroyed a fourth part of the in- 
 habitants of the city. It is now a miserable town, 
 with no indications of its ancient splendour, but 
 traces of the public buildings and the wall of 
 Justinian may even yet be seen. These last extend 
 for a circuit of four miles, and in some places are 
 fifty feet high and fifteen thick, and at intervals 
 there are remains, of the 400 towers which once 
 flanked and guarded it. After heavy rains it is 
 said that portions of marble pavement, rmgs, and 
 other remnants of ancient art, are frequently dis- 
 covered. There is now no Christian church at 
 Antioch. But the entrance to the town from Aleppo 
 'is by one of the old gates, which is still called after 
 St. Paul — Bab Bablous, or the gate of Paul — ^near 
 which the Greek Christians assemble for w^orship 
 in a cavern dedicated to St. John. Such has been 
 the chequered history of Antioch. 
 
 The name which was given to the first disciples 
 at Antioch illustrates a feature which we know from 
 other sources characterised its population, who are 
 
ANTIOCH. 45 
 
 said to have been singularly addicted to ridicule, 
 scurrilous wit, and the giving of nicknames. The 
 Emperor Julian, who was himself insulted by their 
 libels and satires, wrote a satire against them, and 
 said that Antioch contained more buffoons than 
 citizens. It is a singular coincidence, that the 
 emperor who apostatised from Christianity should 
 himself have smarted under the same lash that first 
 invented the name which he abjured. While, how- 
 ever, the satire of Julian remains only as a literary 
 curiosity, and a monument of his resentment and 
 indiscretion, the disciples of Christ have rejoiced that 
 they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His 
 name, have gloried to be called Christians, and the 
 epithet is one which will be held in honour by them 
 as long as the world shall last. 
 
 Antioch figures in the x\cts of the Apostles as the 
 earliest residence of Paul and Barnabas (xi. 26). 
 It was at x\ntioch that the prophet Agabus foretold 
 the famine under Claudius. It was from Antioch 
 that Paul and Barnabas were sent to minister to 
 the brethren at Jerusalem. It was at Antioch that 
 the formal separation of Paul and Barnabas for the 
 work of the Apostolic ministry took place (xiii. 1, 2), 
 and from thence they started on their first journey 
 to Cyprus, Pisidia, Pamphylia, and Attalia. It was 
 at Antioch, during their long sojourn there with the 
 disciples on their return, tliat the first dissensions 
 
46 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 were propagated on the vital matter of circumcision, 
 and hither was brought the Apostolic decree upon 
 the question from the Council at Jerusalem. From 
 Antioch Paul set out on his second missionary 
 journey, after his painful rupture with Barnabas 
 (xv). Once again, at the end of this journey, he is 
 found at Antioch (xviii. 22); but this is the last time 
 the city is mentioned in the narrative of St. Luke. 
 Twice in St. Paul's Epistles Antioch is mentioned : 
 in Galatians ii. 11, St. Paul tells us he withstood 
 Peter to the face at Antioch, in consequence of his 
 dissimulation in not eating with the Gentiles ; and 
 in 2 Tim. iii. 11, he speaks of persecutions and 
 afflictions which came to him at Antioch. As, how- 
 ever, he here joins with it Iconium and Lystra, we 
 can only suppose that he refers to the other Antioch, 
 which was in Pisidia. 
 
 Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch, Evodius 
 being the first, and he is said to have presided over 
 the Church there for about forty years, till his mar- 
 tyrdom, A.D. 107. In the third century three coun- 
 cils were held at Antioch witli reference to the tenets 
 of Paul of Samosata, who was bishop there. The 
 last of these councils was in A.D. 269. In the reign 
 of Theodosius there are said to have been a hundred 
 thousand Christians at Antioch, three thousand of 
 whom were supported out of the public oblations. 
 Cicero mentions Antioch as distinguished for men of 
 
ANTIOCH. 47 
 
 learning, and for the cultivation of the arts. In the 
 fourth century it became the birthplace of St. John 
 Chrysostom, the eloquent church-father and patri- 
 arch of Constantinople, who was bom a.d. 347, was 
 elected patriarch a.d. 398, and died. a.d. 407. 
 
48 
 
 W^T^R^''' 
 
 IY._PHILTPPI. 
 
 HITHERTO we have travelled with St. Panl in 
 Asia ; we are now to go with him, in obedience 
 to the vision which he saw at Troas, across the 
 northern gulf of the ^Egean Sea over into Europe. 
 The man of Macedonia, who stood at his couch by 
 
puiLippi. 49 
 
 night and prayed him, saying, ''Come over into 
 Macedonia, and help us," was the direct means of 
 bringing the Apostle to Philippi. This shows us 
 the nature of the early spread of Christianity. 
 There are many who like to treat the matter in a 
 philosophical spirit, and to trace out minutely the 
 various natural causes by which it was brought 
 about. We are told that there is something m 
 particular races which predisposes them to Christian 
 influences ; that Christianity has a natural affinity 
 with particular nations and countries, and that it 
 can only spread accordingly. Now, in the narrative 
 of St. Luke we are distinctly referred to unseen and 
 supernatural causes, and to a directing, guiding 
 power, upon whose operation even the Apostles 
 themselves could not calculate. When they were 
 come to Mysia they were even desirous of continuing 
 their labours in Asia and of proceeding eastwards 
 to Bithynia, "but the spirit suffered them not" 
 (Acts xvi. 7). They were thus led to Troas on the 
 sea-coast, and therefore on the very verge of Asia 
 Minor, from whence the thoughts of the Apostle, 
 as they followed the setting sun, would naturally 
 turn towards Europe, and from w^hence, in the 
 manner related, he was summoned thither. 
 
 St. Paul was then in company with Silas, and 
 apparently also with Timotheus and Luke — at 
 least this is the first of the so-called "i6*e-para- 
 
 D 
 
50 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 graplis" of tlie Acts ; and when the ship laden with 
 these early missionaries set sail from Troas, it was 
 the commencement of a far more mighty invasion 
 than that of Xerxes, between five and six centuries 
 before. It is well to ponder the seeming insig-nifi- 
 cance of this Apostolic migration from Asia to 
 Europe. Who could have foreseen the vast issues 
 that hung upon if? Who would have thought that 
 a seed so small could have produced a tree so tall 
 and large *? Who would have predicted a success 
 so marvellous to a merely private enterprise so 
 feeble? And yet the progress and civilisation, the 
 enlightenment and intellectual activity, of modern 
 Europe, were contained in germ in that visit of two 
 or three Jews of Asia to one of the seaport towns 
 of Thrace, and in the message which they bare. 
 
 It would seem that in sailing from Troas the 
 Apostle must have had a fair wind, for the distance 
 from thence to Neapolis could be little less than 
 120 miles, and we are told that, running with a 
 straight course to Samothracia, he reached Neapolis 
 the "next day." This was the seaport town of 
 Philippi, which was about nine miles inland, and 
 was approached by a rocky path leading through 
 a gorge 1,600 feet above the level of the sea. 
 Neapolis is now called Kavalla. Philippi, as its 
 name indicates, was built by Philip of Macedon, 
 the father of Alexander the Great. Originally it 
 
PHILiPPI. 51 
 
 had been called Krenides, or the Place of Foun- 
 tains, because of the numerous springs in which 
 the Gangites takes its source. On the banks of 
 tliis deep and rapid stream, now called Angista, 
 Pliilippi was built. It stood on a \vide plain 
 bounded by lofty mountains on the north-east. The 
 ancient walls followed the course of the stream for 
 some distance, and in one place, at about a hundred 
 yards from it, there is still the site of a gate visible 
 with the ruins of a bridge opposite. This was, 
 doubtless, the gate through which St. Paul and his 
 companions went on the Sabbath Day *' out of the 
 city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be 
 made." The better reading is, " out of the gate by 
 the river," which precisely corresponds to what may 
 still be traced. Philippi is described as being the 
 first city to which the Apostle came in that district 
 of Macedonia (not chief, as the English Version has 
 it;) he was bound to Macedonia in consequence of 
 his vision, and this was a reason for not staying in 
 Neapolis, but for pushing on to Philippi. 
 
 It would seem that there was no synagogue of 
 the Jews within the city, and that they were ac- 
 customed to resort to this house of prayer, on the 
 side of the river, wdiither accordingly the Apostle 
 and his company repaired. It was common with the 
 Jews to hold their prayer-meetings near water, 
 probably for the sake of the convenience of it in 
 
 d2 
 
52 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 the '' divers wasliings" of tlieir religion. Here it 
 was that the heart of Lydia was opened, so " that 
 she attended unto the things that were spoken of 
 Paul." She and her whole family were baptized, 
 and the Apostle and his party became her gnests. 
 As they were going from her house to the place of 
 prayer, they were met by a girl who was possessed 
 by "a spirit of Python," and was used by her 
 masters as a means of gain in fortune-telling and 
 the like. She intuitively discovered the character 
 of their mission and proclaimed it abroad, but in 
 such a manner that Paul, being distressed at it, 
 commanded the spirit to come out of her. Here- 
 upon Paul and Silas were violently assaulted by 
 her masters and brought before the magistrates in 
 the market-place, who delivered them over to the 
 military police, and then, having scourged them, 
 thrust them into prison and put their feet in the 
 stocks. This was an indignity to which Paul, as a 
 Koman citizen, ought not to have been exposed. 
 He alludes to it in the First Epistle to the Thes- 
 salonians, when he speaks of being "shamefully 
 intreated at Philippi" (1 Thess. ii. 2). 
 
 It is well to observe the bearing of this incident 
 upon the commencement of St. Paul's mission in 
 Europe. He had reason to believe that he had 
 had a new and a wide field opened to him, but he 
 no sooner begins to explore it than he is cast into 
 
PHILIPPI. 53 
 
 prison ; and though able to obtain some indemni- 
 fication for the violence he had undergone, in the 
 shape of an apology or something like it, he is 
 constrained to quit the town at the entreaty of its 
 principal authorities. He leaves there, however, the 
 nucleus of a future Church in the family of the 
 baptized jailor and in the household of Lydia, 
 together, probably, -with others ; and to them or 
 their representatives the Epistle to the Philippians 
 was afterwards written from his prison at Eome. 
 The Apostle had thoroughly counted the cost, and 
 though on the foreign strand of a new continent, and 
 with the issue of his first attempts so unfavourable, 
 he is not to be disheartened or dismayed, but 
 leaving the good seed he has already sown to the 
 care of the Great Husbandman, he goes forth with 
 confidence to sow it still furtlier in Thessalonica. 
 
 We hear definitely of the Apostle being at 
 Philippi once again (Acts xx. 6), and we may infer 
 that he was also there in Acts xx. 1, but this is 
 not explicitly told us. We know that the Philip- 
 pians had sent assistance to him when he was at 
 Thessalonica (Phil. iv. 15, 16), and during the first 
 occasion of his imprisonment at Ptome they seem to 
 have sent to him again (Phil. ii. 25, iv. 10); they 
 are also, doubtless, included in "the churches of 
 Macedonia," upon whom commendation is passed 
 (2 Cor. viii. 1). 
 
54 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 When Philip of Macedon wrested the district 
 from the Thracians, he found there a town that 
 was called Datns, which he made a frontier town 
 against the incursions of the wild mountaineers, and 
 called it, after his own name, Philippi. The place 
 was celebrated for gold mines, which in his time 
 yielded an annual revenue of a thousand talents. 
 Here was fought, in B.C. 42, the great battle 
 between Brutus and Cassius, and Antony and 
 Octavianus, which resulted in the overthrow of the 
 former two and the downfall of the Koman repubKc, 
 and which paved the way for the supreme ascen- 
 dancy of Octavianus, who styled himself Augustus. 
 In commemoration of his important victory the 
 emperor made Philippi a colonia (Acts xvi. 12), 
 and otherwise enlarged it. At the present time, 
 however, there are but few traces of its existence, 
 and its exact site even is not known. There are, 
 however, two Turkish burial-grounds on the road 
 to it from Neapolis, and in these the monuments 
 are formed of the ruins of the ancient city. 
 
 As a colony, Philippi was governed by its own 
 magistrates or Duumviri, which are the officials 
 mentioned in Acts xvi. 20, and were independent of 
 the provincial governor. 
 
55 
 
 v.— THESSALONICA. 
 
 THE first Epistles of St. Paul, and probably the 
 first writings of the Christian Church, were the 
 two epistles written to the Church at Thessalonica. 
 These, according to our present Authorised Version, 
 were written from Athens. This is a mistake, and 
 
56 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 ouglit not to be perpetuated. It does not appear 
 that St. Paul was more than a few days at Athens ; 
 he did not return thither after having left for 
 Corinth. Silas and Timotheus joined him at Corinth 
 (Acts xviii. 5). Moreover, in 1 Thess. i. 7, 8, he 
 says that the faith of the Thessalonians was spread 
 abroad in every place, and this could hardly have 
 been the case in so short a time as had elapsed 
 between his departure from Thessalonica and his 
 leaving Athens ; and, indeed, the whole tenor of 
 the first Epistle seems to demand a longer interval 
 than that which had intervened before his arrival 
 at Corinth. 
 
 In coming from Philippi to Thessalonica the 
 Apostle had traversed the celebrated Egnatian road 
 of the Komans, which connected the Adriatic and 
 the Hellespont. Amphipolis and ApoUonia were 
 stages in this road, and the whole distance from 
 Philippi to Thessalonica was about a hundred 
 miles. The original name of Thessalonica was 
 Therma. Here Xerxes rested on his march to the 
 subjugation of Europe, and the place is mentioned 
 by Thucydides. The later and more commonly 
 known name dated from the Macedonian period, 
 and it was given in connection with a sister of 
 Alexander the Great who bore that name, and who 
 had been so called in commemoration of a victory 
 obtained by Philip over the Thessalians. The latter 
 
THESSALONICA. 57 
 
 syllables are still preserved in the modern form of 
 it, Salonild. Macedonia was divided into four pro- 
 vinces by Panlus ^Emilius, and Thessalonica was 
 the capital of the second ; afterwards, when the four 
 regions were joined in one, it became the metropolis 
 of the whole. Cicero was exiled here, and some let- 
 ters of his written from this place are still extant. 
 After the battle of Philippi the city was made free 
 by Augustus, so that it was entirely self-governed 
 in all its internal affairs. The governor of the pro- 
 vince had commonly no power over them. The 
 local magistrates had the power of life and death 
 over all the citizens. No permanent garrison of 
 Eoman soldiers was quartered there, and no tokens 
 of Eoman official authority were seen. It was thus 
 different from Philippi, which was a colonia, that is 
 to say, a miniature reproduction of Kome itself in 
 respect of government. 
 
 The city of Thessalonica, being situated on the 
 Thermaic gulf, was populous, commercial, and im- 
 portant ; it commanded the trade of the ^gean, 
 like Ephesus and Corinth, retained its importance 
 during the Middle Ages, and is even now the 
 second city of European Turkey, after Constanti- 
 nople. In the first three centuries of the Christian 
 era, The^^salonica was the principal city between 
 the Adriatic and the Black Sea, and, even after 
 the founding of Constantinople, was the capital of 
 
58 THE CITIES YISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 Greece, Macedonia, and Illyricum. In the middle of 
 the third, it was made a colony of the Empire, and 
 afterwards played a prominent part in the Gothic 
 and Slavonic wars. Constantine passed some time 
 here, and repaired if he did not construct the har- 
 bour. Thessalonica was the scene of a terrible 
 massacre by the Emperor Tlieodosius the Great, 
 who put to death from seven to fifteen thousand of 
 the citizens in revenge for the murder of Botheric, 
 the commander of the Koman garrison, during an 
 outbreak of popular fury. Ambrose, the Archbishop 
 of Milan, excommunicated the emperor, in conse- 
 quence of this act of cruelty, for the space of eight 
 months, and only restored him to the favour of the 
 Church after he had submitted to the discipline of 
 public penance. In the sixth, seventh, and eighth 
 centuries Thessalonica suffered severely under the 
 inroads of the Goths and the Sclaves, though being 
 the chief bulwark against them, and maintaining 
 a successful resistance. In the commencement of 
 the tenth century Thessalonica was taken, after 
 a short struggle, by the Saracen fleet; a great 
 slaughter ensued, and numbers of the citizens were 
 sold as slaves. It is supposed that at this time the 
 population was not far short of a quarter of a 
 million. In the latter end of the twelfth century 
 Thessalonica was again taken by the Normans under 
 Tancred of Sicily, and the inhabitants were bar- > 
 
THESSALONICA. 59 
 
 barously treated by the Latins. The famous Eus- 
 tathius was at this time Archbishop, and to him 
 we are indebted for an account of this invasion. A 
 tliird time the city fell a \ictim to the Tnrks under 
 Amurath II., in 1430, being at that time under the 
 dominion of Venice, to whom it had been sold by 
 the emperor of Constantinople. 
 
 the Jews have at every period been very nu- 
 merous at Thessalonica, probably in consequence of 
 its great mercantile advantages, and accordingly we 
 find the narrative of the Acts saying that at Thes- 
 salonica was tlie synagogue of the Jews : that is, 
 the first one the Apostles had met with in their 
 European journey ; for at Phihppi, being a colony, 
 and not a free city, there was no synagogue, but a 
 house of prayer only outside the walls. The history 
 of the Evangehst tells us only of a sojourn of three 
 weeks at Thessalonica. It is, however, possible that 
 St. Paul may have been a longer time there ; and 
 indeed, when we consider the hold which the Gospel 
 obtained, it seems more probable that he was. In 
 this case the three Sabbath days will simply specify 
 the duration of his testimony in the synagogue, and 
 will not rigidly define the entire period of his 
 preacliing. According to the Acts, his witness bore 
 principally upon three points — the suffering and 
 resurrection of the Messiah, and the Messiahship 
 of Jesus. It is interesting to trace in the Epistles 
 
60 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 to the Thessalonians the recurrence of these topics. 
 Here, also, we find many allusions to that kingdom 
 of the coming of Christ, the proclamation of which 
 appears, from Acts xvii. 7, to have been one of the 
 main causes of his expulsion from the city. It was 
 at Thessalonica, too, that the Apostle had worked 
 for his subsistence, and had inculcated the propriety 
 of so doing ; and it was here that he had more than 
 once received succour from Philippi (Phil. iv. 16): 
 a fact, by the way, which seems to render it likely 
 that his residence there had been for a longer period 
 than one month. The two epistles to Thessalonica 
 have another feature, which is ahke remarkable in 
 itself, and also throws light on the narrative of the 
 Acts. They are devoid of those references to the 
 Old Testament, which in most of St. Paul's epistles 
 are so common. This is the more natural when we 
 find, both from the history and the letters, that the 
 bulk of his converts here were Gentile. It was the 
 "envy" of the Jews against the Gentiles which led 
 to the uproar that occasioned his departure; and 
 it was from "idols" that the Thessalonians had 
 turned to the living God, and not from Jewish 
 bigotry. 
 
 The account given by St. Luke of the crisis which 
 brought about the termination of St. Paul's con- 
 nection with Thessalonica is in minute accordance 
 with sundry details that are otherwise known. 
 
THESSALONICA. 61 
 
 When the house of Jason (cf. Eom. xvi. 21) is as- 
 saulted, mention is made of certain magistrates who 
 are called jooIitarcJis, a name not met with in an- 
 cient literature, but one that has been discovered 
 on a local monument, and which is therefore shown 
 to be strictly appropriate; but not only so, in the 
 same inscription occur three of the very names that 
 were found here — Sosipater, Secundus, and Gains. 
 In like manner, here we have no allusion to lictors, 
 as at Acts xvi. 35, 38, where, in the colomj of 
 Phihppi, they would naturally be seen ; but on the 
 other hand, a free assembly of "the people" is 
 described (Acts xvii. 5) as that superior authority to 
 which the offenders are amenable, as having exposed 
 themselves to judicial investigation for disregard of 
 the rights and liberties of a " free city." Such un- 
 designed coincidences in corroboration of the nar- 
 rative are of priceless importance, because entirely 
 beyond the reach of the most astute and cautious 
 of fabricators. 
 
62 
 
 VI.— ATHENS. 
 
 THE importance of Athens in tlie eyes of the 
 world contrasts strangely with its prominence in 
 Holy Writ. We hear of it only in connection with 
 St. Paul's hasty visit there in Acts xvii., and once 
 
ATHENS. 63 
 
 when he refers to this visit himself in 1 Thess. iii. 1 ; 
 and yet the part that Athens has played in the 
 history of civilisation is not only one that can never 
 be forgotten, but one also that has never been sur- 
 passed. This contrast in the intrinsic importance 
 of things human and things divine is a striking 
 practical commentary on the Apostle's own words : 
 "And after that, in the wisdom of God, the world 
 by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the 
 foolishness of what was preached to save them that 
 believe." For "God hath chosen the foolish things 
 of the world to confound the wise." (1 Cor. i. 
 21, 27.) 
 
 The foundation of Athens, which is ascribed to 
 Cecrops, is lost in the dimness of mythical antiquity. 
 The names also of Erechtheus and of Theseus are 
 found in connection with the pre-historic period ; 
 and these heroes' monuments remained, or were 
 erected subsequently, in the form of celebrated tem- 
 ples, that were dedicated to them and were named 
 after them. Homer makes mention of Athens, and 
 speaks of it in connection with the temple of Erech- 
 theus and the worship that was there paid to him 
 (Iliad, ii. 546). The Acropolis or rocky citadel of 
 Athens was fortified by the Pelasgians in very early 
 times, before the da\vn of histery. The mythical 
 hero of Athens, Theseus, is said to have enlarged 
 the extent of the city, and reconstituted its polity. 
 
64 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 The temple wliicli was built iu honour of him, and 
 called the Theseium, remains even to the present 
 day. The first historical event in the adornment of 
 Athens dates from the sixth century before Christ, 
 in the time of Peisistratus and his sons, that is to 
 say, at an epoch corresponding roughly to the Edict 
 of Cyrus for the return of the Jews from Babylon. 
 Such a comparison of dates may serve to show us 
 the far greater antiquity of sacred history. The 
 biblical history of the Jews is drawing to a close 
 as the secular history of Athens is commencing. 
 Many of the more ancient and famous public 
 buildings of Athens date from the era of the Peisis- 
 tratidse. 
 
 The city was reduced to ashes by the Persian 
 monarch Xerxes, b. c. 480 ; but after the battle of 
 Salamis, which was the sequel of that destruction 
 and the ruin of the Persian fleet, the dominion of 
 Athens at sea was rapidly established over the 
 islands of the ^gean, and for a period of fifty 
 years, till the commencement of the Peloponnesian 
 war, she became so manifestly the first power in 
 Greece that the jealousy of Sparta was excited, 
 which was the virtual cause of its outbreak. This 
 was the brief but palmy age of Athenian glory — the 
 age of Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles. During 
 this period were created those monuments of art 
 which have made Athens the centre of human 
 
ATHENS. G5 
 
 admiration. Themistocles fortified and surrounded 
 the city with walls of nearly eight miles in circum- 
 ference, of much greater extent than had existed 
 hitherto, and greater, in fact, than the actual limits 
 of the city. The walls were run up in haste, owing 
 to the suspicious jealousy of Sparta, but they were 
 strong and massive. Themistocles also foresaw the 
 importance for Athens of cultivatmg her maritime 
 power, and he was the first to fortify the natural 
 harbours of the peninsula of the Peirseus. There 
 are several places where we still find the walls built 
 in the maimer described by Thucydides, that is to 
 say, not filled up in the middle with rubbish, but 
 made throughout with squared stones cramped to- 
 gether with iron and lead. Cimon built the Temple 
 of Theseus, and adorned it with frescoes of the 
 greatest painters ; he also planted and beautified 
 the Academy and the Agora. But it was Pericles 
 who put the finishing stroke to the architectural 
 glories of Athens. He built upon the Acropolis the 
 Parthenon, the famous temple of Minerva the Vir- 
 gin, which is conspicuous even now in every view 
 of Athens. The Propylgea also, or entrance to the 
 Acropolis, and many other public buildings, were 
 erected by him. But his most important works 
 were the celebrated Long Walls (or, as they were 
 called by the Greeks, the long legs, and by the 
 Latins the long arms) of Athens, which connected 
 
 E 
 
66 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 the city with the PeiraBus on the south-west, and 
 with Phalerum on the south-east, and which thus 
 completed the fortification of tlie city from the 
 sea. 
 
 The architectural development of Athens, how- 
 ever, received a check in the Peloponnesian war ; 
 and when the city was taken, B.C. 404, by Lysan- 
 der, the Lacedaemonian commander, the fortifications 
 and long walls were destroyed. Eleven years after- 
 wards, however, they were again restored by 
 Cimon, after his victory over the Lacedaemonians 
 off Cnidus, and for about fifty years the public 
 adornment of Athens again flourished, and several 
 additions and improvements to the city were made. 
 In B. c. 338, after the battle of Chaeroneia, Athens 
 became subject to a power that was soon destined 
 to eclipse her former dominion, that, namely, of 
 Mace don : she retained, however, nominally, her 
 freedom. Twice after this, before the Christian era, 
 Athens was the victim of hostile devastation. Being 
 in misfortune herself, it was her lot to take part 
 with those whose friendship brought ruin in its 
 train. She sided with Eome in her war with the 
 last Philip of Macedon, and, in consequence, that 
 monarch laid waste her territory and destroyed the 
 temples of her gods. This was B.C. 200. Eather 
 more than 100 years afterwards, Athens again 
 espoused the cause of Mithridates against the Ko- 
 
ATHENS. 67 
 
 mans, and was taken by storm, after a siege of 
 several months, by Sulla, B.C. 86. This was tlie 
 occasion of the final desolation of the city. Sulla 
 broke down the long walls, and destroyed the forti- 
 fications and the harbours, and from this time the 
 commerce of Athens languished, and she sank into 
 maritime and mercantile insig-nificance. 
 
 Athens was still destined, however, to sway man- 
 kind, though in a different way. Under the E-omans 
 she was acknowledged as the mistress of the arts 
 and sciences, and was venerated in that capacity. 
 What Paris or Florence, Dresden or Munich, is to us, 
 that Athens was to repubhcan and imperial Eome. 
 She was the home of philosophy, and the centre of 
 intellectual culture and of social refinement ; and in 
 this sense she w^as sovereign of a wider empire than 
 Pericles or Alexander. Of this a remarkable illus- 
 tration is afforded in the fact that many monarchs 
 among "the barbarians" were found willing to con- 
 tribute to the embellishment of Athens. Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus of Egypt, Attains, king of Pergamos, 
 Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria, Julius Caesar 
 and Augustus of Eome, were all conspicuous by 
 the part they bore in this matter, and in some 
 cases monuments of their work still exist. In the 
 second century of the Christian era, in the time of 
 Adrian and the Antonines, the beauty of Athens 
 was complete. The Emperor Adrian was the fore- 
 
 E 2 
 
68 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 most among lier benefactors. He completed the 
 Temple of Olympian Zens, which had been un- 
 finished for seven centuries, and added many public 
 buildings and a new quarter to the city, which he 
 called after his own name. After this period nothing 
 more was done to Athens in the way of embellish- 
 ment, and as most of her great works of art were 
 still in existence, this may be regarded as the epoch 
 of her consummate splendour. In the writings of 
 Pausanius we have a record preserved of how she 
 looked then. Little more than fifty years had 
 elapsed since the visit of St. Paul, so he also must 
 have seen her in the time of her greatest beauty. 
 With the exception of her walls, which had been 
 in ruins since the time of Sulla, she could have lost 
 but little of her original splendour. These walls, 
 however, were repaired by the Emperor Valerian, 
 A. D. 258, and served to protect the city from the 
 incursions of the Goths and Huns. They were 
 again repaired by Justinian. It was not till the 
 time of this latter emperor that the ancient pagan- 
 ism of Athens was supplanted by Christianity. He 
 abolished the schools of philosophy, and then the 
 temples were converted into churches, and the 
 Parthenon became the Church of the Virgin Mother 
 instead of the temple of the virgin Minerva. 
 
 The remainder of the history of Athens is soon 
 told. During the Middle Ages she was of no re- 
 
ATHENS. 69 
 
 nown ; her public buildings seem to have suffered 
 but little for many centuries. After the Latin 
 conquest of Constantinople in 1204, Athens was 
 given as a duchy to one of the followers of Boni- 
 face, the Marquis of Montferrat, who governed 
 Greece under the title of King of Thessalonica. In 
 1456 she passed under the dominion of the Turks, 
 and the Parthenon became a mosque. In 1687 the 
 Venetians besieged Athens, and then the desolation 
 of her magnificent buildings commenced by the 
 explosion of some gunpowder which the Turks had 
 deposited in the Parthenon. After having lasted 
 for nearly 2000 years, it now became a ruin. 
 Since 1834 Athens has been the seat of government 
 to the new kingdom of Greece, of which the brother 
 of our own beloved Princess of Wales is the existing 
 head. 
 
 Athens consisted of three parts : the Acropolis, or 
 central rocky citadel, on which were the Parthenon, 
 the Erechtheium, the Propylsea, and the Temple of 
 Victory ; the Asty, or the surrounding inhabited 
 parts of the city within the walls ; and the Peiraeus, 
 wliich included the outlying portions of the city, 
 together with the harbours of Peiraeus, Munychia, 
 and Phalerum. As has been said, these latter 
 portions were connected with the city proper by 
 the long walls running to the Peiraeus and to Pha- 
 lerum. The general appearance of the situation of 
 
70 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 Athens is said to resemble that of Eduiburgh ; the 
 Acropolis corresponding to the castle, and Mount 
 Lycabettns, on the N.E., to Arthur's ^eat. From 
 the commanding situation of this mountain, a splen- 
 did view is obtained of the whole of Athens, and 
 of the plain reaching to the Peirseus and the sea, 
 which lies at the distance of about six miles. There 
 are three other natural eminences in Athens, viz., 
 the Areopagus, the Pnyx, and the Museum, which 
 lie respectively on the N.W., the W., and the 
 S.W., with reference to the Acropolis. Of these, 
 the first was adorned with the Temple of Ares or 
 Mars, from whence it was called Mars' Hill. The 
 second was a sloping hill, partially levelled so as 
 to form a kind of natural amphitheatre or area in 
 which were held the famous political assemblies 
 of the Athenians, wherein Demosthenes and the 
 orators of matchless power, with their resistless 
 eloquence, 
 
 " Wielded at wiU that fierce democracy, 
 Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece 
 To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne." 
 
 The rocky pulpit of the Pnyx is still remaining; 
 it commanded a view of the Propylsea and the 
 temples of the Acropolis, and he who mounts it now 
 may know that he stands on the identical spot 
 where stood of old Demosthenes, Pericles, Themis- 
 tocleSj Arisiides, and Solon. The tliird confronted 
 
ATHENS. 71 
 
 the Acropolis on the south-west, from which it was 
 separated by a valley. One side of it is still covered 
 with traces of buildings cut in the rock. 
 
 St. Paul, in landing at the Peirseus, would ap- 
 proach Athens by means of the Long AYalls, which, 
 however, were then m ruins. He would probably 
 enter the city by the Peiraic gate, wdiich stood 
 between the extremities of the Pnyx on the left 
 and the Museum on the right. He could thus ap- 
 proach, by means of a long street with a colonnade 
 on either side, like those which are seen in Padua 
 and other Italian to^^^ls, the Agora, or Forum, or 
 market-place, which was the very centre of Athe- 
 nian life, and combined in itself the social charac- 
 teristics of the Stock Exchange, the Clubs, and the 
 Park, among ourselves. On every side, both here 
 and on his way thither, he would be surrounded by 
 those memorials of Pagan worship which a classical 
 and cultivated taste cannot but admire, and is prone 
 to pardon on account of the surpassing genius 
 exercised and the consummate art bestowed upon 
 them, but which, nevertheless, were the e\'idences 
 of gross spiritual darkness, and by which, for that 
 reason, "liis spirit was stirred ^\^thin him, when 
 he saw the city wholly given to idolatry," or 
 full of idols. Here, however, his efforts seem to 
 have been directed primarily to liis own country- 
 men, because we hear of "the synagogue," of 
 
72 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 " the Jews," and of certain " devout persons" wliom 
 he found there. It appears that the notoriety so 
 obtained led to the combined attack or encounter 
 of the Epicureans and Stoics, who brought him to 
 Mars' Hill. 
 
 It is remarkable that these two schools of phil- 
 osophy would be most likely to come into collision 
 with the Gospel, the one from its contrast and 
 essential opposition, the other from its points of 
 apparent resemblance. They bore, in fact, some 
 analogy to the Sadducees and the Pharisees in their 
 resistance to Christ. The one would be opposed on 
 the score of moral laxity, the other on that of 
 formal severity. To both, therefore, the dispensation 
 of the Spirit, the advancement of searching spiritual 
 truth, would be naturally distasteful. In addition 
 to this, the Stoics were virtually Pantheists, the 
 Epicureans virtually Atheists. The characteristic 
 of one was an intellectual or moral pride, that of 
 the other the pursuit of selfish gratification and a 
 sensuous pleasure. On the 'side of the Agora, to- 
 wards the Pnyx, there was a colonnade or cloister, 
 which was known as the Stoa Poikile, or Painted 
 Colonnade, being decorated in the middle and at 
 either end with celebrated paintings of mythical and 
 historical scenes, representing the battle of Ma- 
 rathon and the combat of the Amazons with the 
 Athenians under Theseus. It was this porch or 
 
ATHENS. 73 
 
 Stoa which gave its name to the disciples of Zeno, 
 who were called Stoics, and were the philosophical 
 sect by some members of which St. Paul was con- 
 fronted in the Agora. The disciples of Epicurns, 
 on the other hand, originally assembled in a garden 
 belonging to that philosopher, which was bequeathed 
 by him to the school, and probably existed at the 
 time of the Apostle's visit. 
 
 Of the Academicians and the Peripatetics we hear 
 nothing m the sacred narrative, and it is remark- 
 able that in nearly all ages of the Church edu- 
 cated Christians have not been slow to recognise 
 their permanent obligations to Plato and Aristotle, 
 though at times the influence of both has been pre- 
 judicial to the Church ; that is to say, there has 
 not been the same marked collision between the 
 Gospel and these schools of thought as was mani- 
 fested in the first instance in the case of the Stoics 
 and the Epicureans. The Gospel of Christ is a 
 wonderful touchstone and discerner of spirits : it has 
 only to be proclaimed, to elicit and awaken enmity 
 in those directions where it is instinctively felt to be 
 antagonistic. Both of the schools which encountered 
 St. Paul virtually denied the moral responsibility 
 of man. According to one school, man was only a 
 part of God, and consequently the actions of man 
 were but parts of God's action; and according to 
 the otlier, there was no creator or moral governor 
 
74 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 of the universe, and therefore no judge. Now 
 tenets such as these are inherently antagonistic to 
 the Gospel of Christ, and therefore it is no wonder 
 that the maintainers of them felt the antagonism. 
 And the Apostle, who no doubt felt it also, was by 
 no means careful to disguise the antagonism, or to 
 take refuge in some specious but shallow compro- 
 mise. He declared all the more emphatically and 
 distuictly the very doctrines which were so obnox- 
 ious ; but in doing so the vantage-ground he oc- 
 cupied was very high. The philosophers had nothing 
 but conjecture and logic or tradition to rest upon, 
 nothing but argumentative skill to work with ; but 
 the Apostle had fact. The judgment to come was 
 a certainty, not a speculation, because it was the 
 necessary inference from a fact — it was the long 
 result of an actual resurrection which had taken 
 place. God had pledged Himself to execute judg- 
 ment, because He had revealed the Judge and pro- 
 claimed Him by an act of supernatural power. A 
 man had been raised from the dead, who by that 
 resurrection was declared as the future Judge. 
 Here was an historic fact which, whether or not 
 it was regarded as in the abstract possible or credi- 
 ble, was, nevertheless, not to be questioned. There 
 might be those who would mock at it, and those 
 who would not be satisfied till they heard more 
 about it ; but there were also those on whom, as on 
 
ATHENS. 75 
 
 the Apostle, it would sliow its power by compelling 
 their belief and converting them. The fact, if a 
 fact, could not be acknowledged when there existed, 
 as in the Stoics and Epicureans, the principles of 
 Pantheism or Atheism, which recognised no moral 
 responsibility in man ; but no small confirmation of 
 it as a fact would be afforded by the rapid and yet 
 partial success with which it made its way. To 
 the superficial observation of some who listened to 
 the Apostle lie might " seem to be a setter forth of 
 strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus 
 and the resurrection;" but they were gods who 
 asserted their presence and their power in a way 
 that was altogether "strange" and had never been 
 kno\Mi before — a way that was fatal to Epicurean- 
 ism, and utterly distasteful to Stoicism. 
 
 From the schools of philosophy established at 
 Tarsus, St. Paul would have been familiar with the 
 several tenets of the Athenian pliilosophers, and 
 therefore prepared for the daily disputation which 
 he held ^\dth them. The love of novelty, for which 
 the Athenians had been reproached by Demosthenes 
 four centuries before, led them to take a curious 
 interest in the stranger's conversation, and, with a 
 view to doing adequate honour to his teaching, they 
 led him to the hill of Ares or Mars, where was their 
 highest court of judicature, one special function of 
 which was to take cognisance of religious questions 
 
76 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 and of those affecting public morals. Standing there 
 on this eminence, he was surrounded by the mag- 
 nificent specimens of those temples made with hands 
 in which he was bold to declare that the Most High 
 did not dwell. Supposing him to have faced the 
 south, he would have before him the Agora and the 
 Museum, on his left hand the Acropolis, and on his 
 right the Pnyx, while in the distance on either side 
 were the remains of the Long Walls reaching to 
 the sea, and at his back the Temple of Theseus. 
 His speech at Athens is a remarkable monument 
 and example of that characteristic prudence, dis- 
 cretion, and tact with which he was accustomed to 
 become so readily all things to all men. He begins 
 with a graceful allusion to the religiosity of the 
 Athenians, which, however, on the evidence of their 
 own buildings, was directed to objects of which they 
 were ignorant, and therefore furnished the opening 
 for him to make use of in proclaiming the novel 
 message of the Gospel. It is probable that in this 
 speech he kept immediately in view the special 
 tenets he had met with among the philosophers of 
 the Agora, and alternately set aside the predilec- 
 tions of either party, though tempering the resist- 
 ance he would excite in one quarter by the grateful 
 feehngs of acquiescence he would awaken in another. 
 He assumes, but does not labour to prove, the 
 existence of God, and takes for granted that the 
 
ATHENS. 77 
 
 broad and general features of God's government 
 and providence are sufficiently manifest. But hav- 
 ing thus laid his foundation in natural religion, to 
 wliich the natural conscience testifies, he passes on 
 to the function and character of the future Judge, 
 whom, however, he does not name, but before whom 
 he implies that his judges, with the whole world, 
 will be arraigned at a higher tribunal than the Hill 
 of Mars, the evidence of which assertion is contained 
 in, one fact he is there to proclaim as a chosen 
 witness — that, namely, of the resurrection of his 
 Master from the dead. 
 
 The effect of his speech was very much what we 
 might expect. By some it was received with de- 
 rision, by others with the indifference of delay till 
 a future and more "convenient season," but by 
 some few with acceptance and belief. One of his 
 judges, Dionysius the Areopagite, appears in a 
 tradition of the fourth century as the first Bishop 
 of Athens; and Quadratus, one of the earliest 
 Christian apologists, is also said by Eusebius to 
 have held the same office in the second century. 
 However this may have been, the Gospel did not 
 take root at Athens, and "Paul departed from 
 among them." To the Greek, and especially to the 
 Athenian mind, as being eminently Greek, it was, 
 as he says, "foolishness," a palpable and abiding- 
 proof that there is that in the Gospel message which 
 
78 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 is antagonistic to intellectual pride, and to that 
 want of earnestness, and to that listless devotion to 
 novelty, of which the Athenians, as depicted in the 
 narrative of St. Luke, will ever remain as the most 
 appropriate and familiar type. 
 
VII._COEINTH. 
 
 FROM Athens the Apostle went to Corinth, a 
 journey of some fifty or sixty iniJes. We are not 
 told whether he went by land or by sea. It is not 
 improbable, however, that he went by land, as we 
 ftnd him on another occasion. Acts xx. 13, preferring 
 
80 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 the land journey to the route by sea, in order to 
 avoid, it may be, coasting the headland between 
 Troas and Assos. The Authorised Version in that 
 passage says, "minding himself to go afoot," but 
 the word may equally well be rendered " to go by 
 land," and indeed it is frequently used in contra- 
 distinction to travelling by sea. Alford remarks 
 that he had probably "some apostolic visit to 
 make," which is mere conjecture. It is much more 
 probable that he went by land either for the reason 
 above mentioned or in order to save time. 
 
 The contrast in passing from Athens to Corinth 
 would be like that in leaving Oxford to dwell in 
 Liverpool. One was the centre of intellectual cul- 
 tivation, the other of commercial life. With feelings 
 probably of depression and disappointment the 
 Apostle took leave of the city of the arts and 
 sciences, its sceptical indifference and cold contempt, 
 to live for a while in the society of men of the world, 
 of seafaring people and merchants; but he was 
 capable of becoming all things to all men, and 
 he found what was doubtless a happy home at 
 Corinth, and one that he regarded with affectionate 
 remembrance. 
 
 The situation of the city was very remarkable. 
 As all the ^^^orld knows, it stood upon its famous 
 isthmus, which connected the Peloponnesus or 
 Morea with Greece proper. This neck of land 
 
CORINTH. 81 
 
 where it was narrowest was but three or four miles 
 across, and where it was broadest only ten or 
 twelve. It is a rocky and barren plain. Over its 
 narrowest part ships were frequently conveyed by 
 land to avoid the difficulty and danger of sailing 
 round the Peloponnesus. The idea of cutting a 
 channel to connect the Corinthian Gulf on the west 
 with the Saronic Gulf on the east was entertained 
 severally by the Macedonian kings, by Julius Caesar, 
 and by Nero ; by the last the work was actually 
 commenced, but it was subsequently abandoned. 
 On either side of the isthmus, which runs in the 
 direction of N.E. and S.W., rise the mountains of 
 the mainland and the peninsula respectively. The 
 upper portion of the range was called the Geraneian, 
 the lower the Oneian hills, or " ass's-back," — as we 
 say, the "hog's-back." The rocky citadel of Corinth, 
 which was called the Acrocorinthus, is an isolated 
 spur of this range, and seen from the north has 
 the appearance of a separate mountain. It rises 
 abruptly from the plain to the height of 2000 
 feet, and from its description cannot be very unlike 
 the rock of Gibraltar, the grandeur of which, 
 however, it is even said to surpass. This rock 
 formed the natural defence of Corinth on the south, 
 and it is so steep that a few soldiers were sufficient 
 to guard it. The space on the top, however, is 
 so extensive that a whole town was built on the 
 
 F 
 
82 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 summit. A magnificent view is obtained from tliis 
 mountain, and across tlie Saronic gulf, at a dis- 
 tance of forty-five miles, the Acropolis of Athens is 
 distinctly visible. On the west it did not join the 
 sea, but the intervening space was defended by 
 two long walls, connecting Corinth with its port 
 in this direction, which was called Lichseum. 
 The other port of Corinth on the east was called 
 Cenchrea. 
 
 Corinth was naturally, from its position, the key 
 of Greece and the Peloponnesus, and commanded 
 the only three possible roads from the one to the 
 other. The first of these, as already mentioned, 
 was protected by the long walls; the second lay 
 through the ravine which divided the Acrocorinthus 
 from the Oneian range, and thus was under cover 
 of the fortress; and the third ran along the eastern 
 shore, under the walls of Cenchrea. The only fer- 
 tile district in the neighbourhood was that between 
 Corinth and the ancient Sicyon ; the rest was barren 
 and stony ; and thus the natural endowments of 
 the locality, as well as its natural features, con- 
 tributed to make it a maritime place, as its inha- 
 bitants were more or less dependent for sustenance 
 upon other or distant countries. 
 
 The history of Greece during the classical period 
 is virtually that of a house divided against itself ; 
 the quarrels and jealousies of the two principal 
 
CORINTH. 83 
 
 states, Athens and Sparta, eclipsing in importance 
 those of others, and for the most part absorbing 
 them into themselves. In early times Corinth was 
 the friend and ally of Athens ; but upon the sudden 
 development of Athenian power after the Persian 
 war her jealousy was excited, and she loosened 
 in her attachment. Athens took part with the 
 Corcyraeans in their quarrel with Corinth, and this 
 was one direct cause of the Peloponnesian war, 
 inasmuch as Corinth did all she could to provoke 
 Sparta to declare war against Athens. During the 
 struggle the chief part of the fleet was furnished 
 by Corinth, and she continued steadfast in her 
 enmity to Athens ; and after the battle of iEgos- 
 potami, Athens would have been razed to the 
 ground if Corinth could have prevailed upon Greece 
 to adopt her counsels. After the fall of Athens, 
 however, when Sparta began to manifest a domi- 
 neering spirit, the jealousy of Corinth was naturally 
 excited, and she once more joined the Athenians in 
 an alliance against Sparta. Twice the Lacedaemo- 
 nians were victorious, and the war was carried into 
 the very territory of Corinth. The landowners of 
 the city suffered so much by the devastation of 
 their fields that they sighed for a renewal of their 
 former friendship with Sparta. Internal dissen- 
 sions supervened, and in the sequel Corinth was 
 subdued, and the long walls partially destroyed 
 
 f2 
 
84 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 by the Spartans. This was B.C. 392. In the fol- 
 lowing year they were repaired by the Athenians, 
 who began to be alarmed for their own safety, and 
 the war continued, with varying fortune, till the 
 peace of Antalcidas, B.C. 387, restored Corinth to 
 the Lacedaemonian alliance. Corinth subsequently 
 played a subordinate part in the affairs of Greece 
 till the time of the Macedonian ascendancy. After 
 the battle of Chaeroneia, the kings of Macedon kept 
 a strong garrison in the fortress of the Acroco- 
 rinthus. In B. c. 243, however, the city was annexed 
 to the Achaean League ; but it again fell under the 
 power of Macedon, till, in B.C. 196, it was declared 
 free by the Eomans, restored to the Achaean LeagTie, 
 and the citadel occupied by a Eoman garrison. 
 Corinth now became the seat of Government of 
 the Achaean League, and in that sense the capital 
 of Greece ; but, being foolish enough to quarrel 
 with Eome, and to maltreat the Koman legates, 
 Lucius Mummius entered the city, put the males 
 to the sword, sold the women and children as 
 slaves, pillaged the wealthiest and most luxurious 
 town of Greece, carried its treasures of art to 
 Eome, and set the city on fire. This took place 
 in B.C. 146. 
 
 For a whole century the city lay in ruins. Part 
 of its territory was given to Sicyon, whose in- 
 habitants carried on the Isthmian games ; the rest 
 
CORINTH. 85 
 
 became the property of the Koman people. Its 
 trade for the most part passed over to the island 
 of Delos, But in B.C. 46, Julius Csesar undertook' 
 to rebuild Corinth, and peopled it with freed men 
 from Rome, calling it after bis own name, Colonia 
 Julia CormtJius. The city, therefore, whicli St. 
 Paul visited about a hundred years later was not 
 the Corinth of classical Greece, but a modern 
 prosperous city, which had risen almost within the 
 memory of his associates, like a phoenix from the 
 ashes of her former existence, to a new and powerful 
 life. At this time it was the residence of Junius 
 Gallio, the Proconsul of Achaia, and brother of 
 the pliilosopher Seneca; and Jews, attracted to it 
 by commercial motives, constituted a considerable 
 element in its population. 
 
 As might be supposed, the Isthmus of Corinth 
 has ever played an important part in the military 
 history of the Peloponnesus. It was first fortified 
 in the time of the Persians, and continued to be 
 so more or less down to Christian times. In the 
 period of the dissolution of the Empire, when the 
 incursions of the barbarians poured in from the 
 north, it was strengthened by Valerian. The Em- 
 peror Justinian added yet further to its fortification 
 by building along the Isthmus a hundred and fifty 
 towers, remains of which are still to be seen. In 
 the times of the Venetian ascendancy Corinth was 
 
86 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 frequently conspicuous, and in 1699 was assigned 
 to Venice as the limit of her territory. 
 
 Of the ancient city we know nothing ; but of the 
 Graeco-Eoman city, which is that of the New Testa- 
 ment, and visited by St. Paul, we have accounts 
 by Strabo and Pausanias. The Acrocorinthus, we 
 are told, was about four miles in the ascent, and 
 it ends in a sharp point towards the north. Under 
 this northern side lay the city, of irregular form, 
 close to the very foot of the Acrocorinthus, on a 
 table-land which descended in terraces to the plain. 
 From the summit of the mountain towards the 
 north can be seen the heights of Parnassus and 
 Helicon covered with snow. From the Agora in 
 the centre of the city four principal streets branched 
 off, one to Cenchrea, one to LichaBum, one to Sicyon, 
 and one to the Acrocorinthus. At the present 
 time scarcely any remains of ancient Corinth exist. 
 A few Doric columns of a Grecian temple, a Eoman 
 amphitheatre cut out of the rock, are nearly all. 
 The modern town is small, and extremely unhealthy 
 in summer and autumn owing to malaria. It is 
 now called Gortho, a barbarous corruption of its 
 original name. 
 
 At the time of St. Paul's visit to Corinth the 
 number of resident Jews had been increased by the 
 effect of the edict of Claudius, which had expelled 
 persons of that nation from Eome. The previous 
 
CORINTH. 87 
 
 emperors, Caligula and Tiberius, had also treated 
 the Jews with much severity ; and now, for some 
 reason unknown, but connected probably with their 
 Messianic expectations, they were ejected from the 
 capital. Among the persons thus ejected was 
 Aquila the tentmaker, a native of Pontus, a pro- 
 vince of Asia Minor upon the Black Sea, who came 
 to Corinth with his wife Priscilla, or, as she is 
 called by St. Paul in Eom. xvi. 2 (according to the 
 best MSS.), and in 2 Tim. iv. 19, Prisca. A similar 
 variety is found in some other names — e.g., Livia 
 and Livilla, Drusa and Drusilla. These people 
 were the Apostle's first and constant companions 
 during his stay at Corinth, and their names are 
 found among the salutations in the latest of his 
 epistles. They were therefore lifelong friends. 
 
 It w^as while these three companions were pur- 
 suing their occupation of tentmaking that the First 
 Epistle to Thessalonica was written. It should be 
 read in connection with the history of the Apostle's 
 early stay at Corinth. In it he speaks of the 
 continual thanks and the unceasing prayers which 
 accompanied, as we know from the Acts, his manual 
 labour with the tents of Cilician haircloth. He 
 reminds the Thessalonians that he had laboured 
 night and day, probably in a similar manner, while 
 he was with them. It would seem, from the way 
 in which he speaks of the Jews, that he was just 
 
88 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 beginning to experience the tronbles tliey occasioned 
 him at Corinth, 1 Thess. ii. 15, 16. These troubles 
 arose from the jealousy of Israel at the success of 
 the Christian preaching, which was becoming only 
 too manifest. It seems that more persistent and 
 organised efforts were made by St. Paul on the 
 arrival of Silas and Timotheus from Macedonia, and 
 their efforts were successful, but they resulted in 
 open scliism. The synagogue could no longer be 
 the sphere of his teaching, but he left it, and took 
 refuge in a house adjoining to it, which belonged 
 to a man named Justus, and was placed at his 
 disposal. The house of Justus became the first 
 material Christian church of Corinth. It was pro- 
 bably better suited for the gatherings together for 
 prayer and exhortation than the house of Aquila, 
 with whom possibly the Apostle still continued to 
 live. We thus see the thoroughly domestic origin 
 of the Church of Christ. It sprang out of that 
 life in the family which it is intended to adorn. 
 The upper chamber at Jerusalem was the home 
 of the hundred and twenty disciples. The school 
 of Tyrannus was the cradle of the Ephesian 
 Church. Let us never forget that though the 
 tide of Christian life flows forth from the family 
 and the home till it fills the church, yet its 
 original birthplace is the home rather than the 
 church; and if it would be pure and genuine, 
 
CORINTH. 89 
 
 it must flow back from the church till it fills the 
 home. 
 
 It so happens that we know many of those 
 who must have frequented this house of Justus. 
 The household of Stephanas are called, 1 Cor. xvi. 
 15, the first-fruits of Achaia. St. Paul says that 
 he himself baptized them. In the Authorised 
 Version of Kom. xvi. 5, Epaenetus is also said to 
 have been the first-fruits of Achaia, in w^hich case 
 he must have been the first member of the house- 
 hold of Stephanas who became a Christian; but 
 the true reading in that place, which the Kevised 
 Version will no doubt restore, is Asia and not 
 Achaia. Again, we have mention made more than 
 once of Gains, Kom. xvi. 23 ; 1 Cor. i. 14, who on 
 another occasion entertained the Apostle, as did 
 Aquila and Priscilla, if not Justus. He also was 
 baptized by the Apostle. But more important than 
 all was Crispus, the ruler of the sjTiagogue, who 
 gave in his adherence to and was baptized by liim. 
 A defection so serious as that of Crispus would 
 naturally exasperate the Jews, and also be fruitful 
 in its influence. We can easily trace, therefore, 
 the first elements of the Corinthian Church, which 
 in the eighteen months of St. Paul's residence must 
 have spread considerably, not, however, it appears, 
 so much among the wise, mighty, or noble, as 
 among the morally sick, who were led to feel their 
 
90 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 desperate need of the true Physician, 1 Cor. i. 26 ; 
 vi. 9—11. 
 
 In the midst of the resistance and persecution 
 which now confronted the great teacher, he had 
 special consolation vouchsafed to him, with the as- 
 surance of a large harvest of souls, Acts xviii. 10. 
 This opposition, also, was the cause of an open 
 determination on his part to confine his efforts for 
 the future to the Gentiles. From the features of 
 encouragement which are manifest in this incident, 
 it is not unreasonable to infer that the assistance 
 bestowed was needed^ Perhaps we may read a 
 faint reminiscence of this time of trial in 1 Cor. ii. 3. 
 But a period of greater trial was at hand. Shortly 
 after despatching the first letter to Thessalonica 
 and the receipt of it, the writer found it necessary 
 to indite a second to correct the misapplication that 
 had followed on the first. As these two letters 
 were, in all probability, the earliest portions of our 
 existing New Testament, and certainly of the latter 
 part of it, which consists of letters, we may date 
 from Corinth not only the commencement of a real 
 Gentile Church, but also the first beginning of 
 those oracles of God which are continued in the 
 later volume of Kevelation. Thus was Corinth 
 not only the mart of ancient Greece, the home of 
 her shipbuilding, and the centre of her commerce, 
 but she became also the storehouse of a better 
 
CORINTH. 91 
 
 merchandise, and the dispenser to the world of 
 those unsearchable riches which are reserved for 
 mankind in Christ. 
 
 Tt is here that the sacred history of the Acts 
 touches in one point the secular history of the 
 classical and heathen world, and is illustrated 
 thereby. Under the rule of the Caesars, from Au- 
 gustus to Nero, the provinces of the empire were 
 of two kmds — those which belonged nominally to 
 the Senate and people, and those which, in a more 
 direct manner, were the property of the Emperor. 
 The governor of the former was called a Proconsul, 
 that of the latter a Propraetor — a Governor-General 
 or Commissioner. The former was destitute of 
 military power, the latter rejoiced in the possession 
 of it. The former was an annual office, the latter 
 dependent on the will of the Emperor. Sergius 
 Paulus and Gallio were Proconsuls ; Pontius Pilate, 
 Porcius Festus, Felix, and Cy renins were Pro- 
 praetors, Procurators, or Legates, representing the 
 Emperor. In the case of the province of Achaia, 
 of which Corinth was the capital, there had been 
 alternations of the form of government. First it was 
 Proconsular. In the reign of Tiberius it became 
 Praetorian, and the province was governed by a re- 
 presentative of his own. In the time of Claudius it 
 again became Proconsular, and as we learn from 
 St. Luke, it was so during the period of St. Paul's 
 
92 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 visit, for it is one instance out of many of tlie ex- 
 treme accuracy of the sacred historians, that they 
 invariably use the right technical word to express 
 the office of the particular ruler in each case. 
 
 The character of Gallio, as given by secular 
 writers, is high and honourable, and consistent with 
 what is told us in the Acts. The occasion of his 
 arrival as Proconsul appears to have been seized 
 by the Jews as affording a fit opportunity for an 
 attack upon St. Paul. Their religion was protected 
 by the Koman state, and perhaps they thought that 
 if the offender could be found guilty of violating 
 their own code, he might be delivered into their 
 hands much in the same way that Pilate delivered 
 up Christ to be judged by them, St. John xviii. 31 ; 
 and had Gallio been as irresolute as Pilate their 
 scheme might have succeeded ; but with strict 
 Koman integrity he decided that the cause was none 
 of his jurisdiction, and declined to hear it. Where- 
 upon the Greeks, who hated the Jews, and rejoiced 
 at their discomfiture, turned upon Sosthenes, who 
 had either taken the place of Crispus or was the 
 ruler of another synagogue, and beat him in the 
 presence of the judge. He, however, regarded this 
 outburst of popular resentment as a trivial matter, 
 equally beneath his notice, and left the quarrel to 
 subside of itself, Tliis organised attempt, therefore, 
 on the part of the Jews to silence the Apostle 
 
CORINTH. 93 
 
 signally failed. He was able to stay peaceably at 
 Corinth for some time longer (Acts xviii. 18), but 
 at leugili departed with Aquila and Priscilla from 
 the harbour of Cenchrea for Ephesus, on his way 
 to Jerusalem, to keep one of the annual feasts. We 
 do not expressly read in the Acts of his visiting 
 Corinth again; but he must have done so (xx. 2, 3); 
 and there may have been another visit besides 
 (2 Cor. xiii. 1). 
 
94 
 
 VIII.— EPHESUS. 
 
 IN speaking of Epliesus, the next city that St. Paul 
 visited, we are brought face to face with another 
 contrast, inasmuch as we travel back with him out 
 of Europe into Asia; and a contrast also in the 
 fact that, while Corinth and Athens and Thessa- 
 lonica are still places of more or less prosperity 
 and eminence, the site even of Ephesus is, compara- 
 
EPHESUS. 95 
 
 lively speaking, undiscernible, so completely have 
 its glories passed away. Ephesus, moreover, is 
 intimately associated with St. John, not only in 
 ecclesiastical tradition, but also with his interest 
 in, and relation to, the Seven Churches. Ephesus, 
 therefore, was a city visited by St. John as well 
 as St. Paul, and was, probably, for many years 
 the chosen dwelling-place and home of the beloved 
 disciple. 
 
 About midway between Troas on the north and 
 Patara on the south of the vast promontary of Asia 
 Minor, the river Caystrus debouches into the sea. 
 At the mouth of it, and on the southern side, 
 opposite to the island of Samos, was the city of 
 Ephesus. It appears, according to some, to have 
 been originally called Smyrna, and the place now 
 known by that name, which is two days' journey 
 further to the north, and on a similar arm of the 
 sea, was an offshoot of it. At least there are 
 traditions to that effect ; but how far they are 
 trustworthy is a matter of doubt. The origin of 
 Ephesus is virtually lost in myth ; for some have 
 ascribed its foundation to the Amazons, and others 
 to Ephesus, the son of the river Caystrus. It was 
 originally colonised by Androclus, the son of Codrus, 
 with settlers from Athens; but later, one of the 
 earliest historical incidents in connection with Ephe- 
 sus is its siege by Croesus, king of Lydia, when, 
 
96 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 according to Herodotns, tlie Epliesians committed 
 their city to the protection of Artemis, or Diana, by- 
 fastening a rope from the temple to the wall : the 
 worship, therefore, of this goddess was as old as this 
 period. But at that time the city appears to have 
 been on a hill, and at the distance of nearly a mile 
 from the temple. After the time of Croesus, the 
 inhabitants of the city came down into the plain, 
 and continued in that position till the time of 
 Alexander. 
 
 Ephesus was the chief city of proconsular Asia, 
 and, in consequence of its situation, commanding the 
 sea on the west and the highway to the Euphrates 
 on the east, it was, like Corinth, admirably consti- 
 tuted for being a centre of Christian influence. It 
 appears to have been from very early times a chief 
 resort of Ionian worship. Thucydides mentions it 
 as being so in his own day. But the Artemis of 
 its worship was not the " silvery huntress, chaste 
 and fair," of classical and poetic association, but a 
 hideous monster, by no means a rare work of 
 art, like the statue of Athen6 on the Acropolis of 
 Athens, but much rather like a deformed Indian 
 idol. Connected with her worship there was also 
 an extensive literature, devoted to the pursuit 
 and study of magic, which circumstance has an 
 obvious bearing on the statement in Acts xix. 19. 
 There were sundry mystic letters on the image of 
 
EPHESUS. 97 
 
 the diviiiity, which were regarded with the most 
 superstitious reverence ; and the use and manipu- 
 lation of these letters was a practical science with 
 the Ephesians. 
 
 Of the famous Temple of Diana not a stone re- 
 mains above ground. It stood at the head of the 
 harbour, and was regarded as one of the seven 
 wonders of the world. It is probable that there was 
 some edifice of this kind as early as the colonisation 
 of Androclus. Certainly, in the time of Croesus, 
 it had become the depository of costly gifts, as 
 Herodotus says that that monarch had dedicated 
 the golden heifers and the greater number of the 
 columns. And after the Ketreat of the Ten 
 Thousand, Xenophon deposited there the share that 
 had been entrusted to him of the tithe assigned to 
 Apollo and Artemis of the proceeds of the slaves. 
 The worship of this goddess was carried by settlers 
 as far west as Marseilles. There was also a cele- 
 brated temple to her honour near Cartagena, on 
 the east coast of Spain, a memorial of which is still 
 preserved in the name of the small town, Denia, 
 which is also known as Artemus. It was always 
 believed that the Temple of Diana, thus enriched 
 by the donations of Xenophon, Croesus, and many 
 others, and probably enlarged from time to time, 
 was burnt down by Herostratus on the night that 
 Alexander the Great was born, B.C. 356. The 
 
 a 
 
98 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 goddess was thought to have deserted her temple 
 in order to be present at his birth. The rebuilding 
 of the temple, however, thus destroyed was speedily 
 commenced, and probably on the same site. When 
 Alexander visited Ephesus on his march to Persia, 
 he offered to pay the total cost of the new temple 
 if he might be allowed to place the inscription on it 
 as the person who had dedicated it to the goddess. 
 But he was not permitted. The Ephesians preferred 
 to dedicate their own temple, and even the women 
 contributed their ornaments ; but it was 220 years 
 before it was completely restored. There is some- 
 thing analogous between the building of this temple 
 and that of the magnificeiit church of St. Isaac 
 at St. Petersburg, for both were built upon low, 
 marshy ground, the latter upon piles, the former 
 upon a substructure of charcoal and wood, as was 
 said, in the case of Ephesus, for a protection against 
 earthquakes. 
 
 The temple was 425 feet by 220, and it had 127 
 columns, each the work of a king. It was by far 
 the largest of all the Greek temples. The Par- 
 thenon at Athens was not one-fourth of the size in 
 area. In the second century of the Christian era 
 it was united to the city by a long colonnade ; but 
 in the middle of the third century, in the reign of 
 Gallienus, it was plundered and laid waste by the 
 Goths from beyond the Danube, and shortly after 
 
EPHESUS. 99 
 
 fell into complete decay. It is said that many 
 of its pillars are to be found in the Church of 
 St. Sophia at Constantinople, and in some of the 
 cathedrals of Italy. The construction of these 
 Eastern temples was different from that of our 
 sacred edifices, inasmuch as only a small portion 
 was roofed in ; the greater part was open to the 
 sky. Several of the details of tliis particular edifice 
 were objects of astonishment to the ancient world. 
 The doors of it were made of cypress-wood; the 
 roof — so far as it was roofed — was of cedar ; and 
 the staircase was formed out of the wood of a single 
 vine from the island of Cyprus. In its columns also 
 the Ionic order of architecture reached its mature 
 development, which was a graceful modification of 
 the sterner Doric employed in the Parthenon and 
 Propyla^a of Athens. 
 
 As far as we know from ancient sources, the 
 image of the divinity was of wood; and tradition 
 said it had never been changed, though the temple 
 had been restored seven times. The upper part of 
 it was the deformed bust of a woman, but below 
 it was a shapeless mass. Each hand grasped a bar 
 of metal ; and a curtain concealed the inner shrine, 
 in which it was deposited, from public view. It is 
 only from St. Luke's narrative that we learn the 
 popular superstition which believed it to have fallen 
 down from heaven ; but we know from classical 
 
 g2 
 
100 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 writers that such a belief was entertained with re- 
 ference to other idols. It appears also from St. Lnke 
 that at Ephesus there was a class of workmen 
 who got their livelihood by the manufacture of 
 " silver shrines for Diana/' that is, probably, models 
 in silver (they might be of wood, or gold, or even, 
 as now-a-days, of ivory) of the statue and its shrine. 
 These were very probably carried away by travel- 
 lers as mementos of Ephesus, or they may have 
 been used as a kind of charm in journeys, or kept 
 as household gods at home or in the country. 
 
 The present site of Ephesus is a pestilential 
 marsh. The alluvial soil brought down by the 
 river, which at all times was a serious detriment 
 to the harbour, has had the effect of virtually re- 
 moving the sea to the distance of two or three 
 miles from the site of the ancient city. Till the 
 recent discoveries of Mr. Wood, not a vestige of 
 the world-renowned temple was to be found ; but 
 remnants are visible of the theatre, which is the 
 largest of which we have any trace. It was here, 
 probably, that the multitude made the tumult 
 related in Acts xix. 
 
 In the graphic narrative of St. Luke we have 
 many indications of the political condition of Ephe- 
 sus. For example, it was, like Thessalonica, a free 
 city, with its own government, and not like Philippi, 
 a colonial city. There was a demus, or people, and 
 
EPHESUS. 101 
 
 an assemhhj. There was a toivn-cJerJc, that is to 
 say, a recorder, or chancellor, who kept the archives 
 and state-papers, and whose office it was to read 
 public announcements before the senate. There 
 were proconsuls, who paid periodical visits to the 
 city at the time of the assizes, or court-days of the 
 margin in Acts xix. 38. On that particular occa- 
 sion it was very probably in May, which was the 
 month sacred to the goddess, and was a time of 
 much licence. At this season Ephesus was the 
 centre of attraction for all the proconsular or western 
 part of Asia Minor ; and the lonians came with 
 their wives and families to be present at the fes- 
 tivities and games. The persons who presided over 
 these entertainments were appointed by election 
 from the whole province annually, and were called 
 Asiarchs, translated, in the Authorised Version, 
 "the chief of Asia" (Acts xix. 31). They were ten 
 in number, and were persons of wealth, who were 
 responsible for public order and for the expense 
 attending the public amusements. 
 
 It is not only the narrative in the Acts and the 
 1st Epistle to the Corinthians (which xvi. 8 shows 
 to have been written there) among the books of the 
 New Testament, that bring us into connection with 
 Ephesus ; there are also the two Epistles to Tim- 
 othy, and there is the allusion to Ephesus, in the 
 Eevelation of St. Jolin, as one of the Seven Churches, 
 
102 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 and the letter addressed to it in that capacity. 
 Thus, directly or indirectly, the prominence of 
 Ephesns in the sacred record is very considerable. 
 The points also of Christian teaching which are 
 illustrated by a reference to its history are very 
 important. For example, it is at Ephesus that we 
 meet with one of the first allusions to the defective 
 kind of teaching, which was technically known as 
 " John's baptism." In Acts xviii. 25 we find Apollos 
 coming to Ephesus from Alexandria, with the char- 
 acter of being an eloquent man and mighty in the 
 Scriptures, but acquainted only with the "baptism 
 of John." All that we know of this "baptism" is to 
 be derived from a careful investigation and com- 
 parison of the passages in which it is mentioned. 
 In the 3rd chapter of St. Matthew and St. Luke 
 we find John himself depreciating his baptism in 
 view of the baptism of his Great Successor. And in 
 Acts xix. 4 we find St. Paul telling certain disciples 
 at Ephesus, who had not impossibly come under the 
 earlier teaching of Apollos, that " John verily bap- 
 tized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto 
 the people, that they should believe on Him which 
 should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus." 
 To be baptized with John's baptism, then, implied 
 sorrow for the past, the profession of repentance and 
 change of conduct, with an expectation of, and a 
 willingness to believe in, a coming Messiah. It did 
 
EPHESUS. 103 
 
 not imply any personal knowledge of the regene- 
 rating grace of Christ, of His power to make men 
 new creatures through the Spirit, or of the living 
 reality of any such influence. When the twelve 
 men whom St. Paul met with at Ephesus were told 
 of these new facts, they confessed their need of, and 
 desire for, the operation of them, by being baptized 
 in the name of Jesus, whereupon the spiritual 
 testimony of the Holy Ghost was at once given to 
 His name by the power of prophecy and speaking 
 with new tongues, which forthwith came upon them. 
 This little band of believers constituted the nucleus 
 of the future Ephesian Church, to which, among 
 others, it is possible that the Epistle was afterwards 
 written, over which Timothy for some years pre- 
 sided, and in the heart of wliich St. John eventually 
 lived, and perhaps died. 
 
 For three months the Apostle was allowed to 
 make the synagogue of the Jews the scene of his 
 labours and the field of his preaching, until, as 
 usual, "divers were ' hardened," and thereupon he 
 "disputed daily in the school of one Tyrannus." 
 This was on the occasion of his second visit to 
 Ephesus, whither he had first come with Aquila 
 and Priscilla, but where he had staid only a short 
 time. Acts xviii. 20. Tyrannus was probably a 
 teacher of philosophy, who was not unwilling that a 
 more excellent way should be taught in his lecture- 
 
104 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 rooms, as well as the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle, 
 or else this phrase, the school of Tyrannus, indicates 
 some vacant hall, or building, so known, which was 
 placed at the disposal of the Apostle ; or hired for 
 his use. We learn more of his manner of life at 
 this period from his own address to the Ephesian 
 elders at Miletus, namely, that he had wrought 
 with his own hands for his livelihood, as he had 
 done at Corinth, and probably in the same com- 
 panionship of Aquila and Priscilla; that he had 
 gone about from house to house, as well as taught 
 publicly ; that he had been affectionately earnest, 
 even unto "tears," and that the burden of his 
 message had been "repentance toward God and 
 faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 The propagation of the faith at Ephesus was 
 attended with more than one remarkable incident. 
 For example, we are told that God wrought "special 
 miracles" by the hands of St. Paul, that is to say, 
 such as did not commonly occur, and such as the 
 Church had no right to expect ordinarily. We hear 
 also of remarkable testimony given by evil spirits to 
 the futility of powers not Christian to deal with them, 
 and of the enormous destruction of magical litera- 
 ture in consequence, to the amount of about £2000. 
 Such books were probably sold at an exorbitant 
 price, out of all proportion to their real value, ovdng 
 to their supposed virtue in calamity and disease. 
 
EPHESUS. 105 
 
 And the uproar of Demetrius not improbably arose, 
 more or less, in connection with this public evidence 
 of the spread of the Gospel. For along with the 
 overthrow of faith in magic would necessarily de- 
 cline the respect for, and behef in, the idol and 
 the idol-worship of Ephesus. And the threatened 
 decline of a lucrative source of revenue would 
 naturally fill the hearts of all who were in any 
 way dependent on it with alarm. 
 
 The tumult in the theatre, which was the imme- 
 diate cause of St. Paul's departure from Ephesus, 
 never, as far as we know, to visit it again, was the 
 fitting inauguration of that time of trouble, vicis- 
 situde, and anxiety, which characterised the last 
 few years of his historic career, of which our only 
 authentic information is derived from the narrative 
 in the Acts. Everything now tends to hasten him 
 towards Rome, as the centre of the civilised world, 
 where he is eager to show liimself not ashamed of 
 the Gospel of Clirist. Not very long, probably, 
 before that tumult, he wrote his first Epistle to 
 Corinth. A few months later, after having left 
 Ephesus, he wrote from Macedonia (Acts xx. 1, 2) 
 his second Epistle, in the opening verses of which 
 he alludes to the trouble which came to him in 
 Asia, doubtless referring, at any rate in part, if 
 not exclusively, to this particular time of danger 
 and trial. 
 
106 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 With respect to the epistle that is known as the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians, it cannot fail to strike 
 every reader that there is no allusion in it to the 
 special characteristics of the Ephesian Church, as 
 we know them from the Acts ; and, on the contrary, 
 an apparent implication of others that are incon- 
 sistent with them : as, for instance, the statement 
 that the writer had heard of the faith of the Ephe- 
 sian Church (Eph. i. 15), in which he uses much 
 the same language as he does in addressing 
 Churches to which he was personally a stranger 
 (Rom. i. 8 ; Col. i. 4, 8 ; ii. 1); and the manner in 
 which he speaks of himself (Eph. iii. 2 — 8), as of 
 one of whom the Ephesians knew only by report ; 
 from which, together with other considerations, most 
 critics have come to the conclusion, that the Epistle 
 could not have been addressed to Ephesus, at least 
 not in the special and direct way that other letters 
 were sent to Corinth and elsewhere. For this cause, 
 Paley thought that it was properly the Epistle to 
 Laodicea, mentioned in Col. iv. 16 ; others have 
 believed, with great probability, that it was a kind 
 of circular Epistle, intended for several Churches, 
 and addressed " to the saints wliich are at" Laodicea^ 
 HierajpoUs, or elsewhere, the name of the particular 
 place being filled in according to circumstances. 
 Certain it is, that in no production of St. Paul is 
 the subject-matter more independent of time or 
 
EPHESUS. 107 
 
 special incident, or more appropriate to all believers 
 of every age and country, than in that Epistle, 
 which is commonly, but erroneously, received as 
 written and sent to Ephesus. 
 
108 
 
 IX.— KOME. 
 
 fTHHE Apostle's thoughts as he drew near Eome 
 -■- must have been various and thrilluig, though 
 different in many respects from those of an intelli- 
 gent traveller now-a-days in approaching the modern 
 city. Eome was then the capital of the civilised 
 
ROME. 109 
 
 world, in a sense that London, Paris, and New York 
 cannot claim to be, centres of a mighty circle of 
 civilised influences, though they each and all are; 
 and she had then a past which was destined never 
 to become more brilliant than it had been. She is 
 now the centre of the Christian world — that is to 
 say, of the world professing belief in Christ — in a 
 sense that no other city or capital can claim to be, 
 and she has now a past which is not only what it 
 was when St. Paul was there, but is also enriched 
 vnih the spoils, Pagan and Christian, classical, 
 mediaeval, and modern, ecclesiastical and artistic, 
 of eighteen centuries. The great Apostle entered 
 Rome as a prisoner, not of war, but of a warfare 
 that was against the principalities and powers that 
 were then dominant there, ^ith the shrinking, and 
 trepidation, and apprehension, that were inseparable 
 alike from his peculiar position and his highly 
 nervous, sensitive nature. The traveller enters it 
 now full of expectation and eagerness, like that 
 described by Goethe, who says that his longing to 
 see Rome had for years affected him with a kind 
 of sickness that could only be cured by beholding 
 it and being there : wliich was so intense that, 
 increasing as it did with every moment of delay, 
 he could bring himself to stay but three hours in 
 Florence on his way thither. And yet to almost 
 every traveller a large portion of the interest that 
 
110 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 he feels must be due in a great degree to the first 
 visit of that same Apostle, and the incidents and 
 facts associated therewith. For the temporal sway 
 of Eome, mighty and unequalled as it was, is yet 
 not to he compared with the more permanent and 
 farther-reaching spiritual sway which from all but 
 the earliest ages of Christianity she has gradually 
 been acquiring and striving to exercise over the 
 minds of men ; and tliis spiritual sway is at any 
 rate the outcome, though indeed a perverted result, 
 of that religion which the visit of the Apostle was 
 the means of spreading abroad, and rooting more 
 and more in Eome. 
 
 Into the origin of the city it is useless to inquire. 
 Assuming the legend of its being founded by 
 Eomulus as the only one worthy of any consider- 
 ation, that foundation is fixed by Varro at 753 B.C. 
 The city is built on the left or eastern bank of the 
 Tiber, about fifteen miles from its mouth; the 
 course of the river at this point, before it finally 
 bends towards the sea, being nearly north and 
 south. Eome lies in a vast plain, now called the 
 Campagna, which is about ninety miles long by 
 about twenty-seven broad, and stretches in a south- 
 easterly direction. Looking towards the east from 
 any of the hills of Eome, the horizon is bounded 
 from the north to the south by an almost con- 
 tinuous range of mountains, at a distance varying 
 
ROME. Ill 
 
 from ten to twenty miles. Of these the most 
 northerly is Soracte, and the most southerly Mons 
 Albanus. Two rivers flow through the Campagna, 
 the Arno and the Tiber, the waters of which 
 commingle about three miles before they reach the 
 city, and then flow through it till they fall into 
 the sea at Ostia. At present the Campagna is 
 thinly inhabited, and scarce a tree is visible to 
 break the view ; but in ancient times it was thickly 
 peopled and richly cultivated. 
 
 All the seven hills of Eome, together with the 
 Pincian Hill to the north of them, lie on the left 
 bank of the Tiber. Between them and the Tiber 
 was the Campus Martins, where the river makes 
 a sudden bend to the west; and beyond this bend, 
 on the north, is the Vatican Hill, and more to the 
 south the Janiculum. In ancient Eome the hills 
 were, no doubt, much higher than they are at 
 present, from the accumulation of debris in the 
 valleys, which has raised their surface in parts 
 from fifteen to twenty feet, and in some places even 
 more. The Janiculum is considerably higher than 
 any other of the hills, and from it a mag-nificent 
 view of the city and of the Campagna is to be 
 obtained. The ancient city was much exposed to 
 the opix)site calamities of fire and flood. When 
 the Tiber overflowed, all the lower parts of it, such 
 as the Campus Martins and the Forum, would be 
 
112 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 under water ; and in the case of fire, the dwellings 
 of the poor would be destroyed in a single night, 
 and often to a vast extent ; and then it was that 
 the contrast between the ordinary level of the city 
 and its "seven hills" would be the more evident, 
 as in both cases the buildings erected on them 
 would have the best chance of escape. 
 
 Kome, as St. Paul saw it, was very different from 
 what it is now. In his time the higher parts of 
 the city, which are now occupied more or less with 
 gardens, were the most populous, while the Campus 
 Martins, which is the site of busy streets now, was 
 then comparatively open. The population of ancient 
 Eome was made up, to a very large extent — pro- 
 bably one-half — of slaves. The larger portion of 
 the rest were the abject poor, who were supported 
 in idleness by a miserable system of public doles. 
 There does not seem to have been any middle class 
 or independent artisan population; but, in terrible 
 contrast to the slaves and the paupers already 
 mentioned, were the wealthy, luxurious, and too 
 often profligate patricians, of whose vices the poets 
 and satirists have told so much. Tliis was the sea 
 of heathen society into which the Apostle found 
 himself plunged when he came to Kome. He bore 
 in himself and in his message what was a sufficient 
 and the only antidote to the evils of society as they 
 then presented themselves. The aspect of modern 
 
KOME. 113 
 
 London may be too similar in many points to tliat 
 of ancient Kome ; but bad as it is, and even where 
 it is worst, there are not wanting traces of the 
 operation of this antidote, while that which hinders 
 the aspect from being better is the resistance that 
 is offered to its operation. About two-thirds of the 
 area comprised within the walls of Aurelian are now 
 desolate, comprising ruins, interspersed with con- 
 vents, churches, gardens, and fields. The original 
 area of the city was about a square mile. In the 
 time of Phny the walls were, according to some, 
 nearly twenty miles in circumference; they are 
 now from twelve to fifteen. The number of its 
 gates was at first three, in the time of Pliny thirty- 
 seven, and now they are sixteen. Thirty-one great 
 roads to all parts of the empire converged in the 
 Forum, and radiated from the IVIilliarium Aureum, 
 or 'Grolden Milestone, which was erected by Augustus, 
 and discovered some fifty years ago. The Tiber 
 was spanned by eight bridges, of three of which 
 the remnants still exist. 
 
 At the time when St. Paul visited Kome many 
 monuments of the empire, which are now the 
 greatest ornaments of the city, did not exist. The 
 Colosseum, for example, was not built till the time 
 of Vespasian, and the baths of Diocletian and the 
 Basilica of Constantine were of course much later. 
 The fire of Nero had not yet been kindled, to burn 
 
 H 
 
114 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 for six days and seven nights, and to destroy two- 
 thirds of the city ; and it was in consequence of 
 that fire that the city was rehuilt with greater mag- 
 nificence. The emperors Titus, Domitian, Trajan, 
 and Hadrian, contributed to increase this magni- 
 ficence ; and in the time of the last it may be said 
 that Kome attained her highest degree of archi- 
 tectural splendour. Before very long, however, the 
 city of a thousand years began to decline ; and the 
 Emperor Aurelian, though victorious in Asia, found 
 it needful to repel the inroads of barbarians from 
 the north by surrounding the city with a wall, which 
 is substantially identical with the modern one. It 
 was afterwards repaired by Honorius, and added to 
 by Theodoric, Belisarius, Narses, and by Leo IV. 
 and other Popes. 
 
 In the time of St. Paul, the part of the city 
 inhabited by the Jews was that beyond the Tiber. 
 They were first brought into Eome among Pompey's 
 captives from the East. Many of them were after- 
 wards made free, and, according to the manner of 
 their nation, they and their descendants amassed, 
 in process of time, large wealth. It is evident 
 that they must have made their presence felt at 
 Kome, because we read, for instance, of their being 
 banished by Claudius in a body, as well as of 
 other cruelties to which they were subjected, which 
 can only have been occasioned at that time by 
 
ROME. 115 
 
 their falling directly in collision with the political 
 system of the day. Their expectation of a coming 
 Idng, and the misunderstanding likely to arise in 
 the heathen mind on that subject, may very well 
 have been the cause of such collision. 
 
 The Christians whom St. Paul found at Eome 
 were, no doubt, mixed to a great extent among the 
 Jews; but the origin of the Church there is a 
 matter of very great obscurity. The only clue we 
 have to it is the notice in the Acts that among the 
 various people assembled in Jerusalem on the day 
 of Pentecost were "strangers of Kome, Jews, and 
 Proselytes." These may, and probably did, carry 
 back with them tidings of the marvels they had 
 witnessed, which must have had the effect of sowing 
 the seeds of Christian faith in their own minds, 
 and so they would naturally become the centres 
 and causes of dissemination of that faith in the 
 minds of others. It is evident that many, if not 
 most, of the Christians were of Jewish antecedents, 
 both from what is said in the last chapter of the 
 Acts, where the brethren who went to meet the 
 Apostle at Appii Forum and the Three Taverns 
 seem at any rate to be connected with the Jews 
 mentioned afterwards, though of course distinct 
 from them ; and also from the great familiarity 
 everywhere assumed, in the Epistle to the Komans, 
 of the persons addressed \\dth a Jewish tone of 
 
 h2 
 
116 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 thought and education. It can hardly be that 
 such persons had not m former years been much 
 associated with Jews, even if they were not of 
 Jewish origin themselves. Among the salutations 
 in this Epistle are the names of some whom the 
 writer calls "his kinsmen, who also were in Christ 
 before him.'" These persons would, of course, be 
 Jews. Then we have the friends and brethren, 
 who had conversed with and been instructed by 
 Aquila and Priscilla, who would be partly Jews and 
 partly Gentiles, though, perhaps, chiefly the latter. 
 But in the heathen world there would be a general 
 tendency to confound the Jewish and Christian 
 elements in the population of Kome, and they 
 were, not improbably, thrown together in a local 
 juxtaposition, as well as morally coimected. 
 
 It would be highly interesting to know in what 
 part of the imperial city the Apostle Paul was 
 quartered. His mention of Caesar's household, 
 Phil. iv. 22, and the Prsetorium or palace in i. 13, 
 would seem to hint that he was stationed in the 
 neighbourhood of the household troops who kept 
 guard about the imperial palace on the Palatine 
 Hill. It was to them, apparently, that the Julius 
 belonged who had the charge of St. Paul on liis 
 journey to Eome. 
 
 The most northerly of the hills on the left bank 
 of the Tiber is the Pincian; the Quirinal, the 
 
KOME. 117 
 
 Viminal, and the Esquiline, follow in succession, 
 as separated spurs of the same mountain, which, 
 joined at the base on the east, approximate towards 
 the west after the manner of a horse-shoe. Con- 
 fronting these three hills on the south are the 
 Capitoline, the Palatine, and the Cselian, lying in 
 a semicircular form, while still further to the south 
 and beyond this semicircle is the AventinCj which 
 rises closely from the Tiber. The ancient Campus 
 Martins lay between the river and the Pincian, 
 Quirinal, and Capitoline hills. The principal part 
 of the modern city is included in this area and is 
 traversed by the Corso, which is the Eegent Street 
 of Rome, and about a mile in length. It is ter- 
 minated on the south by the Capitoline Hill, which 
 forms the boundary between the modern and thg 
 ancient city. The Palatine, the Aventine, th% 
 Esquiline, and the Caelian, though included wdthin 
 the modern walls, are comparatively waste as re- 
 gards human habitations, and are occupied mainly 
 with vineyards, gardens, and convents. Modern 
 Eome is divided in two parts by the Corso; the 
 upper town is that on the north and east, and is 
 the foreign quarter and the chief residence of the 
 English visitors. It is the healthiest part of the 
 city, and contains the best houses. The Eome of 
 the Middle Ages, which rose out of the ruins of 
 the imperial city, had nearly disappeared at the 
 
118 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 commencement of tlie sixteenth century, and the 
 present city is not older than the time of Sixtus V., 
 A.D. 1585-1590. It is divided into fourteen dis- 
 tricts or Kioni, of which two only are on the right 
 bank of the Tiber. These districts correspond in 
 number, but in nothing else, to the regions into 
 which Augustus divided ancient Kome, for eleven 
 of them are comprised within the limits of the 
 present city, while only three are assigned to the 
 much larger area of the ancient city. 
 
 At the foot of the Vatican stands the marvel 
 and glory of Christendom, St. Peter's, which, being 
 the greatest architectural achievement of that wor- 
 ship of which it is the centre, is to be regarded also 
 as the indirect cause of the Keformation, inasmuch 
 as the reaction of Luther's teaching was stimulated 
 by the sale of indulgences, to which Julius II. and 
 Leo X. resorted to defray the expense of completing 
 it. Immediately in front of St. Peter's is the Palace 
 of the Vatican, the residence of the Pope, from 
 whence a covered gallery leads to the Castle of 
 St. Angelo, on the right bank of ,the Tiber. This 
 gallery was partially destroyed by the Republicans 
 in 1849. The castle, which is the fortress of Papal 
 Rome, was originally built by Hadrian as his 
 mausoleum, and after his time many of the em- 
 perors were buried there. Here a bridge crosses 
 the Tiber, which represents the ancient Pons iElius. 
 
ROME. 119 
 
 The main portion of it is ancient, and medals of 
 Hadrian still exist, which show the bridge exactly 
 as we see it now, with three large central arches, 
 and smaller arches on either side. Not far from 
 where St. Peter's now stands were the gardens 
 of Nero, in the Vatican. Here it was that, under 
 his persecution, the Christians, wrapped in tlie 
 skins of wild beasts, were torn to pieces by dogs, 
 or, dressed in shirts steeped in pitch, were set on 
 fire to serve as torches in the midnight games. 
 
 When St. Paul entered Kome by the Appian 
 Way, he passed between the C?elian on the right 
 and the Palatine on the left, till he came into the 
 Sacra Via, which some fifteen or twenty years later 
 was spanned by the Arch of Titus, commemorating 
 the overthrow of that polity which was to make 
 way for the setting up of the universal kingdom 
 whose advent Paul proclaimed, and which was to 
 give laws to a vaster and nobler empire than that 
 of Kome itself. On the right of the point where the 
 Appian Way joined the Sacra Via, was afterwards 
 erected and dedicated, by the same emperor, the 
 vast amphitheatre, the remains of which still exist, 
 and are as well known as the Colosseum, and which 
 was so called from a colossal statue of Nero that 
 stood near it. The Sacred Way led from this point to 
 the Forum, the heart and centre of Roman activity 
 and life ; and above the Forum rose the Capitoline, 
 
120 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 with the ancient citadel, so famous in Eoman history, 
 and the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. 
 
 It is hard, in the midst of so mnch of thrilling 
 and immortal interest, to single out any one object 
 of special interest; bnt, for its bearing on sacred 
 history and on biblical illustration, there is no 
 monument of greater interest than the Arch of 
 Titus, And this is of the utmost value, as con- 
 firming in many important particulars the literal 
 accuracy of statements in Scripture and the Old 
 Testament. It is quite conceivable that the spirit 
 of historical scepticism might not have shrunk from 
 throwing discredit on the existence of the Temple 
 and the nature of its furniture, if for any reason 
 it became desirable to do so ; but the permanent 
 memorials preserved in this beautiful monument 
 have for ever made that impossible. We can still 
 see on it the golden table and the silver trumpets, 
 and the candlestick of seven branches, and but 
 for the bas-reliefs on the arch of Titus we should 
 not have known what these were like : the only 
 authoritative representation of them that we have 
 is furnished by these sculptures. It may be worth 
 remembering that this famous candlestick of solid 
 gold, that had been brought to Rome among the 
 spoils of Titus, fell into the Tiber from the Milvian 
 bridge when Maxentius was overthrown by Con- 
 stantine. 
 
ROME. 121 
 
 It is useless to attempt anything like a de- 
 scription in detail of the wonders of modern or of 
 ancient Eome ; and to relate its history, first and 
 last, would be to relate well nigh the history of the 
 world. We may briefly remark upon the five 
 epistles that are the imperishable record of St. Paul's 
 stay at Eome, and so bring to an end these notices 
 of the more important cities that were visited by 
 him in his apostolical and missionary journeys. 
 
 And first we must notice how his ardent wish to 
 visit the metropolis of the ancient world, expressed 
 Acts xix. 21, Eom. i. 15, was actually fulfilled. 
 He hoped to go thither, but it was as a prisoner 
 that he went. His heart, doubtless, misgave him 
 when, after escaping the perils of the deep, and 
 having left Puteoli, he drew nearer and nearer, 
 along the Appian Way, to the goal of former 
 wishes, until he was met by one party of brethren 
 at Appii Forum, and by another some ten miles 
 further on, at the Three Taverns, and whom when 
 he saw he thanked God and took courage. This 
 is a true sample of human life. We long for the 
 fulfilment of a cherished idea, but the fulfilment 
 of it is so different from the anticipation, or it is 
 fulfilled in a way quite other than we should have 
 chosen. Well for those who, like this great servant 
 of God, can thankfully hail their Master's will, 
 whether it is accomplished in the overthrow of 
 
122 THE CITIES VISITED BY ST. PAUL. 
 
 their own will or in the fulfilment of it to their 
 cost and sorrow ! 
 
 We do not sufficiently bear in mind, that during 
 the two years or more of the Apostle's first visit to 
 Eome he was chained by the arm to a soldier night 
 and day, and perhaps to two soldiers by night. 
 In this condition he preached, and converted one 
 sinner in his bonds (Philem. 10); in this condition 
 he received all that came to him in his own 
 hired house ; and in this condition he wrote his 
 Epistles to Philemon, the Ephesians, Philippians, 
 and Colossians. The four letters have an intimate 
 relation to each other. In all he speaks of himself 
 as a prisoner or in bonds, Phil. i. 7; Eph. iii. 1; 
 Col. iv. 18; Philem. 10. It is supposed by Alford 
 that the Epistle to the Philippians was the latest 
 of these four, because he seems to have less 
 freedom, i. 13 — 18, than he had, for example, 
 Eph. vi. 19, 20 ; and because he seems, ii. 23, to 
 be expecting shortly a decision of his cause. There 
 is also, the same writer says, a spirit of anxiety 
 and sadness throughout this Epistle ; but I wish to 
 observe that, however true this may be, we have 
 here the thrice-repeated exhortation to rejoice, 
 Phil. iii. 1, iv. 4, together with the noble confession 
 of the Apostle's own contentment and inward peace, 
 iv. 11, 18. Sad though his letter to Phihppi may 
 be, it is also a treasury of joy, and thus serves to 
 
ROME. 123 
 
 illustrate, in a real and living way, the precious 
 characteristics of that faith of which it is a glorious 
 monument. It is only the cross of Christ which 
 can impress upon the trials and vicissitudes of life 
 the stamp of heavenly peace and joy. The Epistle 
 to Philippi shows that St. Paul had found it do so, 
 and thus that document becomes a standing witness 
 to the power of the Gospel in the case of him who 
 was one of its foremost martyrs. And tliis under- 
 current of Christian joy, so discernible in the 
 Epistle to tlie Philippians, passes, in the Second 
 Epistle to Timothy, which was probably written 
 when the Apostle was for the second time a prisoner 
 in Kome, into the exuberant fulness of triumphant 
 confidence and joyous anticipation of glory expressed 
 at 2 Tim. iv. 6, 7, 8, 18. It was at Kome that 
 he found a martyr's grave ; at Eome that he learnt 
 also the truth of his own confession, ^'To me to die 
 is gain." 
 
 Printed for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 
 at the Clahendon Pkess, Oxford. 
 
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 The cities visited by St. Paul... 
 
 Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
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