The life and work of St. Paul

OTPBUf. 195
the long promontory of Dinaretum on the right, sailed into the bay of Salainis.
The scene must have been very familiar to Barnabas. Before them lay the
flourishing commercial town, conspicuous for its temple of the Salaminian
Jupiter, which tradition assigned to Teucer, son of Telamon. Beyond the
temple there stretched away to the circle of enclosing hills a rich plain, watered
by the abundant streams of the Pediaeus. The site of the town, which our
recent acquisition of the island has rendered so familiar, is now marked by a
few ruins about four miles to the north of the modern Famagosta. The
ancient town never entirely recovered the frightful injuries which it under-
went, first from an insurrection of tho Jews in the roign of Trajan, and afterwards
from an earthquake. But when the Apostles stepped ashore, upon one
of tho ancient piers of which the ruins are still visible, it was a busy and
important place, and we cannot doubt that Barnabas would find many to greet
him in his old home. Doubtless, too, there would bo some to whom their visit
was peculiarly welcome, because, ever since the persecution of Stephen, Cyprus
had been connected with the spread of Christianity. 1
That Barnabas had had a considerable voice in thus repaying to his native
may be conjectured
island the service which it had rendered to Antioeh, 2
from the fact that subsequently, when he had parted from Paul, he and
Mark once more chose it as the scene of their missionary labours. After this
first visit, Paul, often as he passed in sight of it, seems never to have landed
there, disliking, perhaps, to build on other men's foundations; nor does he
allude to Cyprus or to other Cypriotes in any of his Epistles. Whether there
be any truth or not in the legend which says that Barnabas was martyred in
the reign of Nero, and buried near Salainis, it is quite fitting that the church
and grotto near it should be dedicated to him.
But apart from any facilities which may have been derived from his
connexion with the island, it was without doubt an excellent place to form a
starting-point for the evangelisation of the world. One of the largest islands
in the Mediterranean, possessed of a fertile soil, varied in physical formation,
and within easy reach of the three great continents, it had been marked out
by nature as a convenient centre for extensive traffic. The trade in natural
products chiefly metals and wine together with the fact that Augustus had
farmed the copper-mines to Herod the Great, had attracted a large Jewish
population. So vast, indeed, were their numbers, that in the reign of Trajau
(A.D. 116) they rose upon the native inhabitants, under a certain Artemio, and
slew 240,000 of them in one terrible massacre. The revolt was suppressed by
Hadrian with awful severity, and after that time no Jew might set foot upon
the shore of Cyprus on pain of death. 3
Of their work at Salamis we are told nothing, except that " they continued
1 Acts ixi. 16. Acts xl. 20.
* Strabo, xiv. 682 ; Tao, H. II. 2, 4; Jos. Antt. xiii. 10, 4; xvl. 4, 5 ; xvil. 12,
1, 2 ; B. J. ii. 7, 2 ; Philo, Leg., p. 587 ; Milman, Hist, of Jews, iii. 111. For its ancient
history see Meursius, Opp. iii. ; for its modern condition, now so interwkiiig to us, see
General Cteuola's Cyprua,