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scriptions now throw lieht on the rich and varied life of the antique world. In the fine arts the cor- rect sense of the Greeks was tlic guittc, but in com- mercial and industrial life the Roman seems to have been dominant. Latin mercantile words are often transliterated into Greek, and there are numerous other evidences of clo.se commercial intercourse with Italy. Famous Greek teachers and phvsicians frequented the Italian cities (Tac, Ann., XII, 61, 67) somewhat as the Byzantine humanist-s fre(|U(?nted those of Northern Italy. The great municipal families and those well established on the vast es- tates of the central table-land seem to have clung to the ancestral .soil with more fidelity than wa.s shown elsewhere in the Orient. Education of the purely literary type was universal, and to .some ex- tent provided for by the cities and even by the Im- perial government. We read of principals and In- ejjectors of schools, of teachers of writing and music, of masters of boxing, archery, and spear-throwIng, of special privileges for teachers of rhetoric and gram- mar; In a word the Ideal education of the Greek mainland as crystallized in the cla-ssic writers and In the still vigorous school of .Vthens, was in a large measure reproduced in Asia Minor. Homer and the Greek classics were the school books. The chief result of it all wius a race of remarkable public orators known as sophists or rhetoricians, wandering academic lecturers on the glories of the past or on commonplaces of pliilnsophy. poetry, and history. Often bilingual, they were admired by the provincials, who.se favour they held by flattery and sympathy, and by careful attention to the mise en sctne — voice, gesture, dress, attitude. Some of them, like Dio Chrysostom, exhibit genuine native patriotism, but in all of them there echoes a hollow declamatory note, the best evidence of the hopeless character of Greek paganism, of which they were now the chief theologuins and philosophers. Their literary In- fluence was deep and lasting, and though they were inimical to the Christian religion, this Influence may yet be traced in not a few of the Greek Christian writers of their own and later times, .\part from this class the pagan society of .\sia Minor seems to have contributed but a few great names to the annals of science and literature. Two of them come from Bithynia, the al)ove-mentioned rhetorician DIo Chry- sostom, moralist and philosopher, and .\rrian of Nico- medla, historian of .Mexander the (ireat and popular- izer of Epictetus. Pergamus boasts the name of the learned physician Galen, like his earlier fellow-.XslatIc, Xenophon of Cos, a man of scientific attainment,s in his own department, and also of general philo- sophic culture, but a stern enemy of the Chnstlan religion. Nevertheless, just as Roman .\sia Minor boasts of no first-cla.ss cities like .\lexandria or An- tioch, but only of a great many second and third class centres of population, so in literature the great names are wanting, while general literary culture and refinement, both of speech and taste, are wide- spread, and. In the near western section, universal. The cosmopolitan character of imperial administra- tion, the diffusion of education, the facility of travel, and the free use of the two great civilized tongues, made the man of .\sia Minor, in a certain .sen.se, a citizen of the world and fitteil him peculiarly to play an important part from the fourth century on in the spread of Christianity and the adaptation of its idea-s to ( inrco-Roman society. Indi"e<l, without some kiunvleilgc of the civilization that moulded their youth, the Ba.sils and the Gregorys lose half their Interest for us. (.Monun.fen. The Provinces ,of the Roman Empire, New York, 18S7, II, ,'!l.5-i)7; Ramsay. The Historical Geography of the Roman Empin^. London. ISno.)

Spread of Chrislianiti/ in Aifia Minor. — As every- where in the Roman empire, 8<< in .Vsia Minor it was t.— 50

the numerous JewTles in which the Christian religion found its first adherents. In the last three pre- Christian centuries the Seleucid kings of Syria had transplanted from Palestine to Asia Minor thousands of Jewish families whose descendants were soon scattered along all the coa-sts and throughout a great part of the interior. On Pentecost day at Jerusalem (.•Vets. II, rt. 9, 10) there were present among the disei-

f)les "Jews, devout men out of every nation under leaven", also representatives of Pontus, Galatia. Cappadocia, kAn. and HIthynia On his several missionary journeys, St. Paul visited many parts of .\sla Minor an<l established there the first Christian chvirches; in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of .\ct-s there is a vivid and circumstantial description of all the chief phases of his Apostolic activity. His conversion of the Galatians, in particular, hasa

f)erennial Interest for Western Christians, since at Ciust a large [)ortion of that province was composed of descendants of tho.se Celt.s of Gaul who had settled there in the third century K. c. and in St. Paul's time, and for centuries afterwards, still retained their Celtic si>eech and many Celtic institutions (Lightfoot, Commentary on Galatians, London, 1,S96, l-\rt; Ramsay, '1 he Church In the Roman Empire before A. n. 170, New York, 189.3, 97-111; Idem, St. Paul, the Traveller and Roman Citizen, New York, l.SO.S, 130-1,51). Asia Minor was the principal scene of the labours of St. John; he wrote Ills .Apocalypse on the desolate Island of Patmos, and his Gosel probably at Ephesus. He established firmly in the latter city a famous centre of Christian life, and an ancient tradition, as old as the Council of Ephesus (131), .says that the Blessed Virgin spent her last years in the vicinity of Ephesus, and passed thence to her reward. From Ephesus St. John travelled much throughout Asia Minor and has always been credited with the first establishment of many of its episcopal sees; the storj' of the re- conversion of the young robber, touchingly told in the "Quis Dives" of Clement of Alexandria exhibits the popular concept of St. John in the mind of the average Christian of Asia Minor almut the year 2(K). In the "Acts of Tlieda" It Is now recognized that we have a fragment of a life of St. Paul in Asia Minor, wTitten about the middle of the second century, though without ecclesiiistical approval, which throws no little light on .several phiuses of the great Apostle's career but .slightly touched on In the Acts and the Pauline Epistles. St. Peter, too, preached the Christian Faith in Asia Minor. His First Epistle, written frmii Rome (v, 13), is addressed "to the strangers dispersed through Pontus, Galatia, Cappa- docia, .\sla, and HIthynia", i. e. in northern, western, and central .\sla Minor. That the new religion spread rapidly is proved by the famous passage In the letter of Pliny (Ep. x, 97), Roman governor of Bithynia, addres,sed to the Emperor Trajan about 112, in which he says that the whole province is overrun with the contagion of Christianity, the temples are abandoned and the meat of the victims unsaleable, persons of evcrj' age, rank, and condition are joining the new n'liglon. At this period also the Church Historj" of Eusebius shows us the ad- mirable figure of St. Ignatius of Antioch. of whose seven letters five are addressed to Christian churches of .\sia Minor (Philailelpliia, Ei>liesus, Smyrna, Tralles, Miignesia) and reveal an advanced stage of Christian growth. It was at this time that St Polycarp of SmjTna and St. Irena>us of Lyons were born in .Vsia .Minor, Ixith prominent Christian figures of the second centurj-, the latter being the foremost ecclesiastical writer of his period.

It is in Asia Minor that synods, or frequent assem- blies of Christian bishops, first meet us jis a working ecclesiastical institution; even in remote and uncouth Cappadocia they were not Infrequent in the third