The life and work of St. Paul

274 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAITI*
On the next day, still scudding before the wind, 1
the famous Nestus ;
they passed the mouth of
sailed northward of Thasos amid the scenes so full to us
of the memory of Thucydides ; gazed for the first time on the " gold-veined
crags " of Pangaeus saw a ; rocky promontory, and on it a busy seaport, over
which towered the marble Maiden Chamber of Diana ; and so, anchoring in
the roadstead, set foot three of them for the first time on European soil.
The town was Noapolis, in Thrace the modern Kavala which served as the
port of the Macedonian Philippi. Here St. Paul did not linger. As at
Scleueia, and Attaleia, and Perga, and Peiraeus, and Cenchreie, he seemed to
regard the port as being merely a starting-point for the inland town. 2 Accord-
ingly, ho at once left Neapolis by the western gate and took the Egnatian road,
which, after skirting the shore for a short distance, turns northward over a
narrow pass of Mount Pangaeus, and so winds down into a green delicious
plain, with a marsh on one side where herds of largo-horned buffaloes wallowed
among the reeds, and with meadows on the other side, which repaid the snowa
of Hsemus, gathered in the freshening waters of the Zygactes, with the bloom
and odour of the hundred-petal rose. At a distance of about seven miles they
would begin to pass through the tombs that bordered the roadsides in the
neighbourhood of all ancient cities, and one inilo further brought them to
Philippi, whose Acropolis had long been visible on the summit of its pre-
cipitous and towering hill.3
The city of Philippi was a monumental record of two vast empires. It had
once been an obscure place, called Krenides from its streams and springs ; but
Philip, the father of Alexander, had made it a frontier town, to protect Macedonia
from the Thracians, and had helped to establish his power by the
extremely profitable working of its neighbouring gold mines. Augustus, proud
of the victory over Brutus and Cassius, won at the foot of the hill on which
it stands, and on the summit of which Cassius had committed suicide,
elevated
it to the rank of a colony, which made it, as St. Luke calls it, if not the first
yet certainly " a first city of that district of Macedonia." * And this, probably,
was why St. Paul went directly to it. When Perseus, the last successor of
Alexander, had been routed at Pydna (June 22, B.C. 168), Macedonia had
been reduced to a Roman province in four divisions. These, in accordance
1 St. Luke most accurately orcita ei0uSpo;j(ra/iei> of the second day's voyage; a S.S.K.
wind and such are prevalent at times in this part of the ^Egean Avould speed them
direct to Samothrace. but not quite in so straight a course from Samothrace to Neapclia.
2 V. supra, p. 219.
8 Appian, iv. 105. On the site of it is a small Turkish village, called Filibedjik.
4 The full title, "Colonia Augusta Julia Victrix Philippensium," is found on inscrip-
tions (Miss. ArcMol., p. 18). A great deal has been written about f,ns for! ir/xinj ITJ*
ppi'2oc rfc MoucfSoioas JT&UJ Ko\tvia. A favourite explanation is that it means "the first
city of Macedonia they came to," regarding Neapolis as being technically in Thrace.
Both parts of the explanation are most improbable : if irp^n) only meant " the first
they came to," it would be a frivolous remark, and would require the article and the
imperfect tense; and Neapolis, as the port of Philippi, was certainly regarded as a
Macedonian town. TJpun) is justifiable politically for Philippi, though not the capital of
Macedonia Prima, was certainly more important than Amphipolis. Bp. Wordsworth,
makes it mean " the chief city of the frontier of Macedonia" (of. Ezek. xlv. 7).