The life and work of St. Paul

BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITT. 13
It was here that Cleopatra held that famous meeting with the Roman
Triumvir which Shakspeare has immortalised, when she rowed up the silver
Cydnus, and
" The barge she sat in like a burnished throne
Burnt on the water ;
the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them."
Yet it continued to flourish under the rule of Augustus, and enjoyed the distinction
of being both a capital and a free city libera and immunis. It was
from Tarsus that the vast masses of timber, hewn in the forests of Taurus,
were floated down the river to the Mediterranean dockyards ; it was here that
the vessels were unladen which brought to Asia the treasures of Europe ; it
was here that much of the wealth of Asia Minor was accumulated before it
was despatched to Greece and Italy. On the coins of the city she is represented
as seated amid bales of various merchandise. The bright and busy
life of the streets and markets must have been the earliest scenes which
attracted the notice of the youthful Saul. The dishonesty which he had
witnessed in its trade may have suggested to him his metaphors of " huckster-
ing" and "adulterating" the word of life; 1 and he may have borrowed a
metaphor from the names and marks of the owners stamped upon the goods
which lay
2
upon the quays, and from the earnest-money paid by the purchasers.
3
It may even have been the assembly of the free city which made
him more readily adopt from the Septuagint that name of Ecclosia for the
Church of Christ's elect of which his Epistles furnish the earliest instances. 4
It was his birth at Tarsus which also determined the trade in which, during
so many days and nights of toil and self-denial, the Apostle earned his daily
bread. The staple manufacture of the city was the weaving, first into ropes,
then into tent-covers and garments, of the hair which was supplied in
boundless quantities by the goat flocks of the Taurus. 6 As the making of
these cilicia was unskilled labour of the commonest sort, the trade of tentmaker
8 was one both lightly esteemed and miserably paid. It must not,
which he inflicted on the city. (Appian, Bell. Civ. iv. 64.) Topvc
KoliMv afioXo7Tanj jiijrpdiroXis ovtra. (Jos. Anlt. i. 6, 1).
1 2 Cor. ii. 17, am)Xvovre* iv. ; 2, aoXovir.
, . wa BUTOIC riv
2
Eph. i. 13 ; iv. 30. epayi