Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/477

 by imprudently bathing in the classic Cydnus, whose waters were famed for their extreme coldness. By a remarkable coincidence, the next conqueror of the world, Julius Caesar, also rested at Tarsus for some days before his great triumphs in Asia Minor. Cilicia had in the interval between these two visits passed from the Macedonian to the Roman dominion, being made a Roman province by Pompey, about sixty years before Christ, at the time when all the kingdoms of Asia and Syria were subjugated. After this it was visited by Cicero, at the time of his triumphs over the cities of eastern Cilicia; and its classic stream is still farther celebrated in immortal verse and prose, as the scene where Marcus Antony met Cleopatra for the first time. It was the Cydnus, down which she sailed in her splendid galley, to meet the conqueror, who for her afterwards lost the empire of the world. During all the civil wars which desolated the Roman empire through a long course of years in that age, Tarsus steadily adhered to the house of Caesar, first to the great Julius and afterwards to Augustus. So remarkable was its attachment and devotion to the cause of Julius, that when the assassin Cassius marched through Asia into Syria to secure the dominion of the eastern world, he laid siege to Tarsus, and having taken it, laid it waste with the most destructive vengeance for its adherence to the fortunes of his murdered lord; and such were its sufferings under these and subsequent calamities in the same cause, that when Augustus was at last established in the undivided empire of the world, he felt himself bound in honor and gratitude, to bestow on the faithful citizens of Tarsus the most remarkable favors. The city, having at the request of its inhabitants received the new name of Juliopolis, as a testimony of their devotion to the memory of their murdered patron, was lavishly honored with almost every privilege which the imperial Augustus could bestow on these most faithful adherents of his family. From the terms in which his acts of generosity to them are recorded, it has been inferred,—though not therein positively stated,—that he conferred on it the rank and title of a Roman colony, or free city, which must have given all its inhabitants the exalted privileges of Roman citizens. This assertion has been disputed however, and forms one of the most interesting topics in the life of the great apostle, involving the inquiry as to the mode in which he obtained that inviolable privilege, which, on more than one occasion, snatched him from the clutches of tyrannical persecutors. Whether he held this privilege in common with all the