The life and work of St. Paul

236 THE LIIfE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL.
nearly eucirclod by a great bend of the river, tho mines which wero near it, and
the neighbouring forests, wliich furnished to the Athenian navy 90 man?
pines, fit
Of some groat ammiral,"
" To be the mast
made it a position of high importance during the Peloponnosian wars. If St.
Paul had ever read Herodotus he may have thought with horror of the human
sacrifice of Xerxes 1
the burial alive at this place of nine youths and nine
maidens; and if he had read Thucydides which is excessively doubtful, in
spite of a curtain analogy between their forms of expression he would have
gazed with peculiar interest on tho sepulchral mound of Brasidas, and the
hollowing of the stones in tho way-worn city street which showed tho feet of
men and horses under the gate, and warned Kloon that a sally was intended. 1
If he could read Livy, which is by no means probable, ho would recall tho fact
that in this town Paulas JEmilius 3 one of tho family from whom his own
father or grandfather may have derived his name had hero proclaimed, in
the name of Rome, that Macedonia should be free. But all this was little or
nothing to tho Jewish missionaries. At Amphipolis there was no synagogue,
and therefore no ready means of addressing either Jews or Gentiles.* They
therefore proceeded the next day thirty miles farther, through scenery of sur-
passing loveliness, along the Strymonic Gulf, through the wooded pass of
Aulon, where St. Paul may have looked at the tomb of Euripides, and along
the shores of Lake Bolbe to Apollonia. Here again they rested for a night,
and the next day, pursuing their journey across tho neck of the promontory of
Chalcidice, and leaving Olynthus and Potidaea, with their heart-stirring
memories, far to the south, they advanced nearly forty miles farther to tho
far-famed town of Thessalonica, the capital of all Macedonia, and though a
5
free city, tho residence of the Roman Proconsul
Its position on the Egnatian road, commanding the entrance to two great
inland districts, and at the head of the Thermaic Gulf, had made it an
important seat of commerce. Since the days when Cassander had re-founded
it, and changed its name from Therina to Thessalonica in honour o* his wife,
who was a daughter of Philip of Macedon, it had always been a flourishing
city, with many historic associations. Here Cicero had spent his days of
melancholy exile. 8 Here a triumphal arch, still standing, commemorates tho
victory of Octavianus and Antony at Philippi. From hence, as with the blast
of a trumpet, not only in St. Paul's days, 7 but for centuries afterwards, the
Word of God sounded forth among tho neighbouring tribes. Here Theodosius
was guilty of that cruel massacre, for which St. Ambrose, with heroic faithfulness,
kept him for eight months from tho cathedral of Milan. Hero its
good and learned Bishop Eustathius wroto those scholia on Homer, which
i Hdt. vii. 114.
8 Thuc. iv. 103107, v. 611. lav. 30.
xly.
4 The town had become so insignificant that Strabo does not even mention it.
1 Plin. H. N. iv. 17. Cic. Pro. Plane. 41. 1 1 Thess. i. 8, itfatfn*