The life and work of St. Paul

THE SECOND CAPITAL OF CHBISTIANITY. 163
been carried across ravines and over mountain summits with such daring
magnificence of conception as to give the city the aspect of being defended by
its own encircling mountains, as though those gigantic bulwarks were but its
natural walls. The palace of the kings of Syria was on an island formed by
an artificial channel of the river. Through the entire length of the city, from
the Golden or Daphne gate on the west, ran for nearly five miles a fine corso
adorned with trees, colonnades, and statues. Originally constructed by
Seicucus Nicator, it had been continued by Herod the Great, who, at once to
gratify his passion for architecture, and to reward the people of Antioch for
their good-will towards the Jews, had paved it for two miles and a half with
blocks of white marble. 1 Broad bridges spanned the river and ite various
affluents; baths, aqueducts, basilicas, villas, theatres, clustered on the level
plain, and, overshadowed by picturesque and rugged eminences, gave the
city a splendour worthy of its fame as only inferior in grandeur to Alexandria
and Rome. Mingled with this splendour were innumerable signs
of luxury and comfort. Under the spreading plane-trees that shaded tho
banks of the river, and among gardens brightened with masses of flowers,
sparkled amid groves of laurel and myrtle the gay villas of the wealthier
inhabitants, bright with Greek frescoes, and adorned with every refinement
which Roman wealth had borrowed from Ionian luxury. Art had lent its aid
to enhance the beauties of nature, and one colossal crag of Mount Silpius,
which overlooked the city, had been carved into human semblance by the skill
of Le'ios. In the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, a pestilence had ravaged the
kingdom, and to appease the anger of the gods, the king had ordered the
sculptor to hew tho mountain-mass into one vast statue. The huge grim face,
under the rocky semblance of a crown, stared over the Forum of the city, and
was known to tho Antiochenes as tho Charonium, being supposed to represent
the head of
" That grim ferryman which poets write of,"
who conveyed the souls of the dead in his dim-gleaming boat across the waters
of tho Styx.
It was natural that such a city should attract a vast multitude of inhabi-
tants, and those inhabitants were of very various nationalities. The basis of
the population was composed of native Syrians, represented to this day by the
2 Maronites ; but the Syrian kings had invited many colonists to people their
Presidenco, and the most important of these were Greeks and Jews. To these,
after the conquest of Syria by Poinpey, had been added a garrison of Romans. 3
The court of tho Legato of Syria, surrounded as it was by military pomp,
attracted into its glittering circle, not only a multitude of rapacious and
domineering officials, but also that large retinue of flatterers, slaves, artists,
literary companions, and general hangers-on, whoso presence was deemed
1
Jos, Antt. xvi. 5, 3.
2
Kenan, Lea Apdtres, p. 228.
'
Syria was made a Roman province B.C. 64, M. JEmil. Scaurus went there aa
Quaestor pro fraetore B.C. 62,