Footnote 21:

The modern name of Cadmus is Baba-Dagh, ‘The father of mountains.’

Footnote 22:

Strabo xii. l.c. ἡ δὲ Λαοδίκεια μικρὰ πρότερον ὀῦσα ἀύξησιν ἔλαβεν ἐφ’ ἡμῶν καὶ τῶν ἡμετέρων πατέρων, καίτοι κακωθεῖσα ἐκ πολιορκίας ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτου τοῦ Ἐυπάτορος. Strabo flourished in the time of Augustus and the earlier years of Tiberius. The growing importance of Laodicea dates from before the age of Cicero: see p. 7.

Footnote 23:

Strabo l.c.; Diog. Laert. ix. 11 § 106, 12 § 116; Philostr. Vit. Soph. i. 25; Eckhel Doctr. Num. Vet. III. p. 162, 163 sq.

Footnote 24:

Rev. iii. 17; see below p. 43.

Footnote 25:

Strabo l.c.

Footnote 26:

The ruins of Laodicea have formed the quarry out of which the modern town of Denizli is built. Yet notwithstanding these depredations they are still very extensive, comprising an amphitheatre, two or three theatres, an aqueduct, etc. The amphitheatre was built by the munificence of a citizen of Laodicea only a few years after St Paul wrote, as the inscription testifies; Boeckh Corp. Inscr. no. 3935. See especially Hamilton I. p. 515 sq., who describes these ruins as ‘bearing the stamp of Roman extravagance and luxury, rather than of the stern and massive solidity of the Greeks.’

[Sidenote: Its political rank, as the capital of a conventus.]

Not less important, as throwing light on the Apostolic history, is the political status of Laodicea. Asia Minor under the Romans was divided into districts, each comprising several towns and having its chief city, in which the courts were held from time to time by the proconsul or legate of the province, and where the taxes from the subordinate towns were collected[27]. Each of these political aggregates was styled in Latin conventus, in Greek διοίκησις—a term afterwards borrowed by the Christian Church, being applied to a similar ecclesiastical aggregate, and thus naturalised in the languages of Christendom as diocese. At the head of the most important of these political dioceses, the ‘Cibyratic convention’ or ‘jurisdiction,’ as it was called, comprising not less than twenty-five towns, stood Laodicea[28]. Here in times past Cicero, as proconsul of Cilicia, had held his court[29]; hither at stated seasons flocked suitors, advocates, clerks, sheriffs’-officers, tax-collectors, pleasure-seekers, courtiers—all those crowds whom business or leisure or policy or curiosity would draw together from a wealthy and populous district, when the representative of the laws and the majesty of Rome appeared to receive homage and to hold his assize[30]. To this position as the chief city of the Cibyratic union the inscriptions probably refer, when they style Laodicea the ‘metropolis[31].’ And in its metropolitan rank we see an explanation of the fact, that to Laodicea, as to the centre of a Christian diocese also, whence their letters would readily be circulated among the neighbouring brotherhoods, two Apostles address themselves in succession, the one writing from his captivity in Rome[32], the other from his exile at Patmos[33].

Footnote 27:

See Becker and Marquardt Röm. Alterth. III. 1. p. 136 sq.

Footnote 28:

See Cic. ad Att. v. 21,‘Idibus Februariis ... forum institueram agere Laodiceæ Cibyraticum,’with the references in the next note: comp. also Plin. N.H. v. 29 ‘Una (jurisdictio) appellatur Cibyratica. Ipsum (i.e. Cibyra) oppidum Phrygiæ est. Conveniunt eo xxv civitates, celeberrima urbe Laodicea.’

Besides these passages, testimony is borne to the importance of the Cibyratic ‘conventus’ by Strabo, xiii. 4 § 17 (p. 631), ἐν ταῖς μεγίσταις ἐξετάζεται διοικήσεσι τῆς Ἀσίας ἡ Κιβυρατική. It will be remembered also that Horace singles out the Cibyratica negotia (Epist. i. 6. 33) to represent Oriental trade generally. The importance of Laodicea may be inferred from the fact that, though the union was named after Cibyra, its head-quarters were from the first fixed at or soon afterwards transferred to Laodicea.

Footnote 29:

See ad Fam. ii. 17, iii. 5, 7, 8, ix. 25, xiii. 54, 67, xv. 4; ad Att. v. 16, 17, 20, 21, vi. 1, 2, 3, 7. He visited Laodicea on several occasions, sometimes making a long stay there, and not a few of his letters are written thence. See especially his account of his work there, ad Att. vi. 2, ‘Hoc foro quod egi ex Idibus Februariis Laodiceæ ad Kalendas Maias omnium dioecesium, præter Ciliciæ, mirabilia quædam efficimus; ita multæ civitates, etc.’ Altogether Laodicea seems to have been second in importance to none of the cities in his province, except perhaps Tarsus. See also the notice, in Verr. Act. ii. I. c. 30.

Footnote 30:

The description which Dion Chrysostom gives in his eulogy of Celænæ (Apamea Cibotus), the metropolis of a neighbouring ‘dioecesis,’ enables us to realise the concourse which gathered together on these occasions: Orat. XXXV (II. p. 69) ξυνάγεται πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων δικαζομένων, δικαζόντων, ἡγεμόνων, ὑπηρετῶν, οἰκετῶν, κ.τ.λ.

Footnote 31:

On this word see Becker and Marquardt l.c. p. 138 sq. It had lost its original sense, as the mother city of a colony. Laodicea is styled ‘metropolis’ on the coins, Mionnet IV. p. 321.

Footnote 32:

Col. iv. 16 with the notes. See also below p. 37, and the introduction to the Epistle to the Ephesians.

Footnote 33:

Rev. iii. 14.

[Sidenote: Its religious worship.]

On the religious worship of Laodicea very little special information exists. Its tutelary deity was Zeus, whose guardianship had been recognised in Diospolis, the older name of the city, and who, having (according to the legend) commanded its rebuilding, was commemorated on its coins with the surname Laodicenus[34]. Occasionally he is also called Aseis, a title which perhaps reproduces a Syrian epithet of this deity, ‘the mighty.’ If this interpretation be correct, we have a link of connexion between Laodicea and the religions of the farther East—a connexion far from improbable, considering that Laodicea was refounded by a Syrian king and is not unlikely to have adopted some features of Syrian worship[35].

Footnote 34:

See Eckhel III. p. 159 sq. (passim), Mionnet IV. p. 315 sq., ib. Suppl. VII. p. 578 sq. (passim). In the coins commemorating an alliance with some other city Laodicea is represented by Zeus; e.g. Mionnet IV. pp. 320, 324, 331 sq., Suppl. VII. pp. 586, 589.

Footnote 35:

==αϲειϲ== or ==αϲειϲ λαοδικεων==. See Waddington Voyage en Asie Mineure au point de vue Numismatique (Paris 1853) pp. 25, 26 sq. Mr Waddington adopts a suggestion communicated to him by M. de Longpérier that this word represents the Aramaic עזיזא ‘the strong, mighty,’ which appears also in the Arabic ‘Aziz.’ This view gains some confirmation from the fact, not mentioned by Mr Waddington, that Ἄζιζος was an epithet of the Ares of Edessa: Julian Orat. iv; comp. Cureton Spic. Syr. p. 80, and see de Lagarde Gesamm. Abhandl. p. 16. On the other hand this Shemitic word elsewhere, when adopted into Greek or Latin, is written Ἄζιζος or Azizus: see Garrucci in the Archæologia XLIII. p. 45 ‘Tyrio Septimio Azizo,’ and Boeckh Corp. Inscr. 9893 Ἄζιζος Ἀγρίπα Σύρος. M. de Longpérier offers the alternative that ασειϲ, i.e. Ἀσίς, is equivalent to Ἀσιατικός. An objection to this view, stronger than those urged by Mr Waddington, is the fact that Ἀσίς seems only to be used as a feminine adjective. M. Renan points to the fact that this ζευς ασεις is represented with his hand on the horns of a goat, and on the strength of this coincidence would identify him with ‘the Azazel of the Semites’ (Saint Paul, p. 359), though tradition and orthography alike point to some other derivation of Azazel (עזאזל).

[Sidenote: 2. HIERAPOLIS.]

[Sidenote: Its situation.]

2. On the north of the valley, opposite to the sloping hills which mark the site of Laodicea, is a broad level terrace jutting out from the mountain side and overhanging the plain with almost precipitous sides. On this plateau are scattered the vast ruins of HIERAPOLIS[36]. The mountains upon which it abuts occupy the wedge of ground between the Mæander and the Lycus; but, as the Mæander above its junction with the Lycus passes through a narrow ravine, they blend, when seen from a distance, with the loftier range of the Mesogis which overhangs the right bank of the Mæander almost from its source to its embouchure, and form with it the northern barrier to the view, as the Cadmus range does the southern, the broad valley stretching between. Thus Hierapolis may be said to lie over against Mesogis, as Laodicea lies over against Cadmus[37].

Footnote 36:

For descriptions of Hierapolis, see Smith p. 245 sq., Pococke p. 75 sq., Chandler 229 sq., Arundell Seven Churches p. 79 sq., Hamilton p. 517 sq., Fellows Asia Minor p. 283 sq. For the travertine deposits see especially the description and plates in Tchihatcheff P. I. p. 345, together with the views in Laborde (pl. xxxii-xxxviii), and Svoboda (photogr. 41–47). Tchihatcheff repeatedly calls the place Hieropolis; but this form, though commonly used of other towns (see Steph. Byz. s.v. Ἱεραπόλις, Leake Num. Hell. p. 67), appears not to occur as a designation of the Phrygian city, which seems always to be written Hierapolis. The citizens however are sometimes called Ἱεροπολῖται on the coins.