[109] There is a series of plates in Lewin's Life of St. Paul, vol. i., pp. 130-36, depicting the site and ruins of Antioch, and showing the roads which connected it with all the leading towns of the neighbourhood, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe. Professor Ramsay, in his Historical Geography of Asia Minor, bestows a good deal of attention on Antioch of Pisidia and its position: see pp. 47, 57, 85, 391, 453.
[110] St. Paul, writing in 2nd Corinthians, speaks of himself as at times in perils of robbers. This danger may well have happened to him in the central districts of Asia Minor. There is an interesting story of St. John and the bandits in Eusebius, H. E., iii., 23. The incidents there told took place in Asia Minor.
[111] Iconium was in St. Paul's day the centre of an independent tetrarchy ruled by native princes. See Pliny's Nat. Hist., v. 27. The site of Iconium has never been uncertain. It was made the capital of their dominions by the Sultans of the Seldjuk Turks, and continued to occupy that position till the conquest of Constantinople. It is still called Konia, a modification of its original name, and still continues to attract a large population on account of the beauty and convenience of its situation, which gives it the title of the Damascus of Asia Minor. According to tradition Sosipatros, one of the seventy disciples, was the bishop of Iconium, and was succeeded by Terentius, another member of the same sacred company; Acta Sanctorum, June 20th, p. 67; Ramsay, Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 332. The latest account of Iconium as it is at present will be found in Sterrett's Epigraphical Journey in Asia Minor, printed among the Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Boston, 1884. vol. ii., p. 188-225.
[112] The apostles seem to have acted as in former times persons harassed by legal processes could do in this country. A writ directed to a sheriff only ran within his own county. A man could not be arrested under it if he passed one step beyond the county bounds, till countersigned by the sheriff of the county into which the delinquent had passed. Under the Roman empire the local liberties and jurisdictions were simply infinite, a fact which of course lent much assistance to persons persecuted as the apostles were. Derbe, for instance, was a native city of Lycaonia, and belonged to the Koinon or local assembly of that province. Lystra was situated indeed in Lycaonia, but being a Roman colony had therefore exceptional privileges, and scorned to belong to the local Assembly of native cities. See Ramsay, Hist. Geog., pp. 332, 375, 376.
[113] It is well perhaps to note that the ι in this name is long, representing the diphthong ει, the Greek name of the town being Ἀττάλεια.
[114] See vol. i., p. 216.
[115] The words of Dion are: "Eo tempore Cyprum ac Galliam Narbonensem, quia nihil armis suis indigerent, populo reddidit; atque ita proconsules etiam in istas provincias mitti cœperunt." See the works of Dion, edited by H. Valerius, vol. i., p. 733 (Hamburg, 1750). Valerius, in his note on this passage, notes the inaccuracies into which the older critics—Grotius, Hammond, Baronius—had fallen about Acts xiii. 7.
[116] Cf. vol. i., pp. xi, 300.
[117] See the story of Philemon and Baucis as told in Smith's Dictionary of Classical Biography and Mythology.
[118] The site of Lystra and the fact that it was a Roman colony were unknown till 1884, when Sterrett discovered an inscription which ascertained both facts: see Ramsay's Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 332, and Sterrett's Epigraph. Journey, already quoted, from "Papers of American School at Athens," vol. iii., p. 142 (Boston, 1888). Artemas, one of the seventy disciples, is said to have been bishop of Lystra: see Acta Sanct., June 20th, p. 67.