already preached the Gospel in Cilicia,' might wish now to extend it among those districts which lay more immediately contiguous, and the population of which was, in some respects, similar to that of his native province. He might also reflect that the natives of a comparatively unsophisticated district might be more likely to receive the message of salvation, than the inhabitants of those provinces which were more completely penetrated with the corrupt civilisation of Greece and Rome. Or his thoughts might be turning to those numerous families of Jews, whom he well knew to be settled in the great towns beyond Mount Taurus, such as Antioch in Pisidia, and Iconium in Lycaonia, with the hope that his Master's cause would be most successfully advanced among those Gentiles, who flocked there, as everywhere, to the worship of the synagogue. Or, finally, he may have had a direct revelation from on high, and a vision, like that which had already appeared to him in the Temple,3 or like that which he afterwards saw on the confines of Europe and Asia,' may have directed the course of his voyage. Whatever may have been the calculations of his own wisdom and prudence, or whatever supernatural intimations may have reached him, he sailed, with his companions Barnabas and John, in some vessel, of which the size, the cargo, and the crew, are unknown to us, past the promontories of Drepanum and Acamas, and then across the waters of the Pamphylian Sea, leaving on the right the cliffs 5 which are the western boundary of Cilicia, to the innermost bend of the bay of Attaleia. This bay is a remarkable feature in the shore of Asia Minor, and it is not without some important relations with the history of this part of the world. It forms a deep indentation in the general coast-line, and is bor dered by a plain, which retreats itself like a bay into the mountains. From the shore to the mountains, across the widest part of the plain, the distance is a journey of eight or nine hours. Three principal rivers intersect this level space: the Catarrhactes, which falls over the sca-cliffs near Attaleia, in the waterfalls which suggested its name; and farther to the east the Cestrus and Eurymedon, which flow by Perga and Aspendus to a low and sandy shore. About the banks of these rivers, and on the open waters of the bay, whence the eye ranges freely over the ragged mountain summits which inclose the scene, armies and fleets had engaged in some of those battles of which the results were still felt in the day of St. Paul. From the base of that steep shore on the west, where a rugged knot of mountains is piled up into snowy heights above the rocks of Phaselis, the 1 See pp. 104-106 and 117. * Strabo's expression is, Οι Πάμφυλοι, πολὺ τοῦ Κιλικίου φύλου μετέχοντες, xii. 7. › Acts xxii. 17-21. See p. 104. 4 Acts xvi. 9. 3 About C. Anamour (Anemurium, the southernmost point of Asia Minor), and Alaya (the ancient Coracesium), there are cliffs of 500 and 600 feet high. See Purdy, p. 244. Compare our Map of the N. E. corner of the Mediterranean. united squadron of the Romans and Rhodians sailed across the bay in the year 190 B.C.; and it was in rounding that promontory near Side on the east, that they caught sight of the fleet of Antiochus, as they came on by the shore with the dreadful Hannibal on board. And close to the same spot where the Latin power had defeated the Greek king of Syria, another battle had been fought at an earlier period, in which the Greeks gave one of their last blows to the retreating force of Persia, and the Athenian Cimon gained a victory both by land and sea; thus winning, according to the boast of Plutarch, in one day the laurels of Platæa and Salamis. On that occasion a large navy sailed up the river Eurymedon as far as Aspendus. Now, the bar at the mouth of the river would make this impossible. The same is the case with the river Cestrus, which, Strabo says, was navigable in his day for sixty stadia, or seven miles, to the city of Perga. Ptolemy calls this city an inland town of Pamphylia; but so he speaks of Tarsus in Cilicia. And we have seen that Tarsus, though truly called an inland town, as being some distance from the coast, was nevertheless a mercantile harbour. Its relation with the Cydnus was similar to that of Perga with the Cestrus; and the vessel which brought St. Paul to win more glorious victories than those of the Greek and Roman battles of the Eurymedon,-came up the course of the Cestrus to her moorings near the Temple of Diana. All that Strabo tells us of this city is that the Temple of Diana was on an eminence at some short distance, and that an annual festival was held in honour of the goddess. The chief associations of Perga are with The description in Livy is as vivid as if it proceeded from an eye-witness: "in confinio Lyciæ et Pamphylia Phaselis est: prominet penitus in altum, conspiciturque prima terrarum Rhodum a Cilicia petentibus, et procul navium præbet prospectum .... Postquam superavere Rhodii promontorium, quod ab Sida prominet in altum, axtemplo et conspecti ab hostibus sunt, et ipsi eos viderunt." xxxvii. 23. Compare the English Sailing Directions. Plut. Cim. 3 See Beaufort's Karamania, p. 135. 4 Εἰθ ̓ ὁ Κέστρος ποταμὸς, ὃν ἀναπλεύσαντι σταδίους ἑξήκοντα Πέργη πόλις. xiv. 4. 5 Perga is reckoned among the Пaμovλías μeoóуelol. Ptol. v. 5, 7. So Tarsus among the Κιλικίας μεσογ. ν. 8, 7. • Πλησίον ἐπὶ μετεώρου τόπου τὸ τῆς Περγαίας ̓Αρτέμιδος ἱερὸν, ἐν ᾧ πανήγυρις κατ' έτος συντελεῖται. xiv. 4 7 From the British Museum. PERGA. 161 the Greek rather than the Roman period: and its existing remains are described as being "purely Greek, there being no trace of any later inhabitants." Its prosperity was probably arrested by the building of At taleia after the death of Alexander, in a more favourable situation on the shore of the bay. Attaleia has never ceased to be an important town since the day of its foundation by Attalus Philadelphus. But when the traveller pitches his tent at Perga, he finds only the encampments of shepherds, who pasture their cattle amidst the ruins. These ruins are walls and towers, columns and cornices, a theatre and a stadium, a broken aqueduct encrusted with the calcareous deposit of the Pamphylian streams, and tombs scattered on both sides of the site of the town. Nothing else remains of Perga, but the beauty of its natural situation, "between and upon the sides of two hills, with an extensive valley in front, watered by the river Cestrus, and backed by the mountains of the Taurus.” 3 The coins of Perga are a lively illustration of its character as a city of the Greeks. We have no memorial of its condition as a city of the Romans; nor does our narrative require us to delay any longer in describing it. The Apostles made no long stay in Perga. This seems evident, not only from the words used at this point of the history, but from the marked manner in which we are told that they did stay,' on their return from the interior. One event, however, is mentioned as occurring at Perga, which, though noticed incidentally and in a few words, was attended with painful feelings at the time, and involved the most serious consequences. It must have occasioned deep sorrow to Paul and Barnabas, and possibly even then some mutual estrangement: and afterwards it became the cause of their quarrel and separation. Mark "departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work." He came with them up the Cestrus as far as Perga, but there he forsook them, and, taking advantage of some vessel which was sailing towards Palestine, he "returned to Jerusalem," which had been his home in earlier years. We are not to suppose that this implied an absolute rejection of Christianity. A soldier who has wavered in one battle may live to obtain a glorious vic 1 Fellows. See Note 3. [In a letter received from E. Falkener, Esq., Architect, it is stated that though the theatre is disposed after the Greek manner, its architectural details (as well as those of the stadium) are all Roman.] Acts xiv. 25. 3 This description is quoted or borrowed from Sir C. Fellow's "Asia Minor, 1839," pp. 190-193. Gen. Köhler appears to have seen these ruins in 1800, on "a large and rapid stream" between Stavros and Adalia, but without identifying them with Perga Leake's Asia Minor, p. 132. See Cramer, ii. 280. * Διελθόντες ἀπὸ τῆς Πέργης, xiii. 14. On their return it is said, διελθόντες τὴν Πισιδίαν, xiv. 24. Similarly, a rapid journey is implied in διοδεύσαντες τὴν Α. καὶ Δ xvii. 1. * Δαλήσαντες ἐν Πέργῃ τὸν λόγον, κατέβησαν, κ. τ. λ. xiv 25. Acts xv. 37-39. VOL. 1.-11 7 Acts xiii. 13. Acts xii. 12, 25 2 tory. Mark was afterwards not unwilling to accompany the Apostles on a second missionary journey; and actually did accompany Barnabas again to Cyprus. Nor did St. Paul always retain his unfavourable judg ment of him (Acts xv. 38), but long afterwards, in his Roman imprisonment, commended him to the Colossians, as one who was 66 a fellowworker unto the kingdom of God," and " a comfort" to himself: 3 and in his latest letter, just before his death, he speaks of him again as one "profitable to him for the ministry." Yet if we consider all the circumstances of his life, we shall not find it difficult to blame his conduct in Pamphylia, and to see good reasons why Paul should afterwards, at Antioch, distrust the steadiness of his character. The child of a religious mother, who had sheltered in her house the Christian disciples in a fierce persecution, he had joined himself to Barnabas and Saul, when they travelled from Jerusalem to Antioch, on their return from a mission of charity. He had been a close spectator of the wonderful power of the religion of Christ, he had seen the strength of faith under trial in his mother's home, he had attended his kinsman Barnabas in his labours of zeal and love, he had seen the word of Paul sanctioned and fulfilled by miracles,— he had even been the "minister" of Apostles in their successful enterprize and now he forsook them, when they were about to proceed through greater difficulties to more glorious success. We are not left in doubt as to the real character of his departure. He was drawn from the work of God by the attraction of an earthly home. As he looked up from Perga to the Gentile mountains, his heart failed him, and turned back with desire towards Jerusalem. He could not resolve to continue persevering, "in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers." " : "Perils of rivers" and "perils of robbers "-these words express the very dangers which St. Paul would be most likely to encounter on his journey from Perga in Pamphylia to Antioch in Pisidia. The lawless and maurauding habits of the population of those mountains which separate the table-land in the interior of Asia Minor from the plains on the south coast, were notorious in all parts of ancient history. Strabo uses the same strong language both of the Isaurians who separated Cappadocia from Cilicia, and of their neighbours the Pisidians, whose native fortresses were the barrier between Phrygia and Pamphylia. We have the 3 Col. iv. 10. Acts. xv. 37. 4 2 Tim. iv. 11. 2 Acts xv. 39. 5 See Acts xiii. 5. Matthew Henry pithily remarks: "Either he did not like the work, or he wanted to go and see his mother." 7 2 Cor. xi. 26. • See p. 20. • Of Isauria he says, ληστῶν ἅπασαι κατοικίαι, xii. 6. Of the Pisidians he says that καθάτεο οἱ Κίλικες, ληστρικῶς ἤσκηνται. Ib. 7. He adds that even the Pamphyliana PERILS OF THE JOURNEY. 163 same character of the latter of these robber tribes in Xenophon, who is the first to mention them; and in Zosimus, who relieves the history of the later empire by telling us of the adventures of a robber chief, who defied the Romans and died a desperate death in these mountains. Alexander the Great, when he heard that Memnon's fleet was in the Egean, and marched from Perga to rejoin Parmenio in Phrygia, found some of the worst difficulties of his whole campaign in penetrating through this district. The scene of one of the roughest campaigns connected with the wars of Antiochus the Great was among the hill-forts near the upper waters of the Cestrus and Eurymedon. No population through the midst of which St. Paul ever travelled, abounded more in those "perils of robbers," of which he himself speaks, than the wild and lawless clans of the Pisidian Highlanders. And if on this journey he was exposed to dangers from the attacks of men, there might be other dangers, not less imminent, arising from the natural character of the country itself. To travellers in the East there is a reality in "perils of rivers," which we in England are hardly able to understand. Unfamiliar with the sudden flooding of thirsty water-courses, we seldom comprehend the full force of some of the most striking images in the Old and New Testaments. The rivers of Asia Minor, like all the rivers in the Levant, are liable to violent and sudden changes. And no district in Asia Minor is more singularly characterised by its "water floods" than the mountainous tract of Pisidia, where rivers burst out at the bases of huge cliffs, or dash down wildly through narrow ravines. The very notice of the bridges in Strabo, when he tells us how the Cestrus "though living on the south side of Taurus, had not quite given up their robber habits and did not always allow their neighbours to live in peace." 1 Xen. Anab. I. i. 11. ix. 9. m. ii. 14. • 4 His name was Lydius—τὸ γένος Ισαυρος, ἐντεθραμμένος τῇ συνήθει ληστείᾳ. Ζ03. pp. 59-61, in the Bonn Ed. The scene is at Cremna. See the Map. Compare what Zosimus says of the robbers near Selge, 265. The beautiful story of St. John and the robber (Euseb. Eccl. Hist. iii. 23) will naturally occur to the reader. See also the frequent mention of Isaurian robbers in the latter part of the life of Chrysostom, prefixed to the Benedictine edition of his works. 3 See the account of Arrian, 1. 27, 28, and especially the notices of Selge and Sagalassus; and compare the accounts of these cities by modern travellers, P. Lucas, Arundel, and Fellows. 4 See especially the siege of Selge by Achæus in Polybius, v. 72-77. Compare the account of Sagalassus in the narrative of the Campaign of Manlius. Liv. xxxviii. 15, and see Cramer's Asia Minor. 5 Thus the true meaning of 2 Cor. xi. 26 is lost in the English translation. Similarly, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vii. 25, 27), norauò is translated "floods," and the image confused. See Ps. xxxii. 6. The crossing of the Halys by Croesus (Herod. i. 75) is an illustration of the difficulties presented by the larger rivers of Asia Minor. Vonones, when attempting to escape from Cilicia (Tac. Ann. ii. 68), lost his life in consequence of not being able to cross the Pyramus. |