St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A...

Lying in, or overhanging, the valley of the Lycus, a tributary of the Mæander, were three neighbouring towns, Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colossæ[1]. The river flows, roughly speaking, from east to west; but at this point, which is some few miles above its junction with the Mæander, its direction is more nearly from south-east to north-west[2]. Laodicea and Hierapolis stand face to face, being situated respectively on the southern and northern sides of the valley, at a distance of six miles[3], and within sight of each other, the river lying in the open plain between the two. The site of Colossæ is somewhat higher up the stream, at a distance of perhaps ten or twelve miles[4] from the point where the road between Laodicea and Hierapolis crosses the Lycus. Unlike Laodicea and Hierapolis, which overhang the valley on opposite sides, Colossæ stands immediately on the river-bank, the two parts of the town being divided by the stream. The three cities lie so near to each other, that it would be quite possible to visit them all in the course of a single day.

Thus situated, they would necessarily hold constant intercourse with each other. We are not surprised therefore to find them so closely connected in the earliest ages of Christianity. It was the consequence of their position that they owed their knowledge of the Gospel to the same evangelist, that the same phases of thought prevailed in them, and that they were exposed to the same temptations, moral as well as intellectual.

On the one hand, the valley of the Lycus was and is especially liable to violent earthquakes. The same danger indeed extends over large portions of Asia Minor, but this district is singled out by ancient writers[5] (and the testimony of modern travellers confirms the statement[6]), as the chief theatre of these catastrophes. Not once or twice only in the history of Laodicea do we read of such visitations laying waste the city itself or some flourishing town in the neighbourhood[7]. Though the exterior surface of the earth shows no traces of recent volcanoes, still the cavernous nature of the soil and the hot springs and mephitic vapours abounding here indicate the presence of those subterranean fires, which from time to time have manifested themselves in this work of destruction.

But, while the crust of the earth is constantly broken up by these forces from beneath, another agency is actively employed above ground in laying a new surface. If fire has its fitful outbursts of devastation, water is only less powerful in its gradual work of reconstruction. The lateral streams which swell the waters of the Lycus are thickly impregnated with calcareous matter, which they deposit in their course. The travertine formations of this valley are among the most remarkable in the world, surpassing even the striking phenomena of Tivoli and Clermont[8]. Ancient monuments are buried, fertile lands overlaid, river-beds choked up and streams diverted, fantastic grottos and cascades and archways of stone formed, by this strange capricious power, at once destructive and creative, working silently and relentlessly through long ages. Fatal to vegetation, these incrustations spread like a stony shroud over the ground. Gleaming like glaciers on the hill-side they attract the eye of the traveller at a distance of twenty miles[9], and form a singularly striking feature in scenery of more than common beauty and impressiveness.

At the same time, along with these destructive agencies, the fertility of the district was and is unusually great. Its rich pastures fed large flocks of sheep, whose fleeces were of a superior quality; and the trade in dyed woollen goods was the chief source of prosperity to these towns. For the bounty of nature was not confined to the production of the material, but extended also to the preparation of the fabric. The mineral streams had chemical qualities, which were highly valued by the dyer[10]. Hence we find that all the three towns, with which we are concerned, were famous in this branch of trade. At Hierapolis, as at Thyatira, the guild of the dyers appears in the inscriptions as an important and influential body[11]. Their colours vied in brilliancy with the richest scarlets and purples of the farther east[12]. Laodicea again was famous for the colour of its fleeces, probably a glossy black, which was much esteemed[13]. Here also we read of a guild of dyers[14]. And lastly, Colossæ gave its name to a peculiar dye, which seems to have been some shade of purple, and from which it derived a considerable revenue[15].

1. Of these three towns Laodicea, as the most important, deserves to be considered first. Laodice was a common name among the ladies of the royal house of the Seleucidæ, as Antiochus was among the princes. Hence Antiochia and Laodicea occur frequently as the designations of cities within the dominions of the Syrian kings. Laodicea on the Lycus[16], as it was surnamed to distinguish it from other towns so called, and more especially perhaps from its near neighbour Laodicea Catacecaumene, had borne in succession the names of Diospolis and Rhoas[17]; but when refounded by Antiochus Theos (B.C. 261–246), it was newly designated after his wife Laodice[18]. It is situated[19] on an undulating hill, or group of hills, which overhangs the valley on the south, being washed on either side by the streams of the Asopus and the Caprus, tributaries of the Lycus[20]. Behind it rise the snow-capped heights of Cadmus, the lofty mountain barrier which shuts in the south side of the main valley[21]. |Its growing prosperity.| A place of no great importance at first, it made rapid strides in the last days of the republic and under the earliest Cæsars, and had become, two or three generations before St Paul wrote, a populous and thriving city[22]. Among its famous inhabitants are mentioned the names of some philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians, men renowned in their day but forgotten or almost forgotten now[23].

More to our purpose, as illustrating the boasted wealth and prosperity of the city, which appeared as a reproach and a stumblingblock in an Apostle’s eyes[24], are the facts, that one of its citizens, Polemo, became a king and a father of kings, and that another, Hiero, having accumulated enormous wealth, bequeathed all his property to the people and adorned the city with costly gifts[25]. To the good fortune of her principal sons, as well as to the fertility of the country around, the geographer Strabo ascribes the increase and prosperity of Laodicea. The ruins of public buildings still bear testimony by their number and magnificence to the past greatness of the city[26].

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].

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].

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].

It is at Hierapolis that the remarkable physical features which distinguish the valley of the Lycus display themselves in the fullest perfection. Over the steep cliffs which support the plateau of the city, tumble cascades of pure white stone, the deposit of calcareous matter from the streams which, after traversing this upper level, are precipitated over the ledge into the plain beneath and assume the most fantastic shapes in their descent. At one time overhanging in cornices fringed with stalactites, at another hollowed out into basins or broken up with ridges, they mark the site of the city at a distance, glistening on the mountain-side like foaming cataracts frozen in the fall.

But for the immediate history of St Paul’s Epistles the striking beauty of the scenery has no value. It is not probable that he had visited this district when the letters to the Colossians and Laodiceans were written. Were it otherwise, we can hardly suppose, that educated under widely different influences and occupied with deeper and more absorbing thoughts, he would have shared the enthusiasm which this scenery inspires in the modern traveller. Still it will give a reality to our conceptions, if we try to picture to ourselves the external features of that city, which was destined before long to become the adopted home of Apostles and other personal disciples of the Lord, and to play a conspicuous part—second perhaps only to Ephesus—in the history of the Church during the ages immediately succeeding the Apostles.

Like Laodicea, Hierapolis was at this time an important and a growing city, though not like Laodicea holding metropolitan rank[38]. Besides the trade in dyed wools, which it shared in common with the neighbouring towns, it had another source of wealth and prosperity peculiar to itself. The streams to which the scenery owes the remarkable features already described, are endowed with valuable medicinal qualities, while at the same time they are so copious that the ancient city is described as full of self-made baths[39]. An inscription, still legible among the ruins, celebrates their virtues in heroic verse, thus apostrophizing the city:

Coins of Hierapolis too are extant of various types, on which Æsculapius and Hygeia appear either singly or together[41]. To this fashionable watering-place, thus favoured by nature, seekers of pleasure and seekers of health alike were drawn.

To the ancient magnificence of Hierapolis its extant ruins bear ample testimony. More favoured than Laodicea, it has not in its immediate neighbourhood any modern town or village of importance, whose inhabitants have been tempted to quarry materials for their houses out of the memorials of its former greatness. Hence the whole plateau is covered with ruins, of which the extent and the good taste are equally remarkable; and of these the palæstra and the thermæ, as might be expected, are among the more prominent.

A city, which combined the pursuit of health and of gaiety, had fitly chosen as its patron deity Apollo, the god alike of medicine and of festivity, here worshipped especially as ‘Archegetes,’ the Founder[42]. But more important, as illustrating the religious temper of this Phrygian city, is another fact connected with it. |The Plutonium.|In Hierapolis was a spot called the Plutonium, a hot well or spring, from whose narrow mouth issued a mephitic vapour immediately fatal to those who stood over the opening and inhaled its fumes. To the mutilated priests of Cybele alone (so it was believed) an immunity was given from heaven, which freed them from its deadly effects[43]. Indeed this city appears to have been a chief centre of the passionate mystical devotion of ancient Phrygia. But indications are not wanting, that in addition to this older worship religious rites were borrowed also from other parts of the East, more especially from Egypt[44]. By the multitude of her temples Hierapolis established her right to the title of the ‘sacred city,’ which she bore[45].

Though at this time we have no record of famous citizens at Hierapolis, such as graced the annals of Laodicea, yet a generation or two later she numbered among her sons one nobler far than the rhetoricians and sophists, the millionaires and princes, of whom her neighbour could boast. The lame slave Epictetus, the loftiest of heathen moralists, must have been growing up to manhood when the first rumours of the Gospel reached his native city. Did any chance throw him across the path of Epaphras, who first announced the glad-tidings there? |Epictetus and Christianity.|Did he ever meet the great Apostle himself, while dragging out his long captivity at Rome, or when after his release he paid his long-promised visit to the valley of the Lycus? We should be glad to think that these two men met together face to face—the greatest of Christian, and the greatest of heathen preachers. Such a meeting would solve more than one riddle. A Christian Epictetus certainly was not; his Stoic doctrine and his Stoic morality are alike apparent: but nevertheless his language presents some strange coincidences with the Apostolic writings, which would thus receive an explanation[46]. It must be confessed however, that of any outward intercourse between the Apostle and the philosopher history furnishes no hint.