ASIA
787
ASIA
scriptions now throw lieht on the rich and varied
life of the antique world. In the fine arts the cor-
rect sense of the Greeks was tlic guittc, but in com-
mercial and industrial life the Roman seems to have
been dominant. Latin mercantile words are often
transliterated into Greek, and there are numerous
other evidences of clo.se commercial intercourse
with Italy. Famous Greek teachers and phvsicians
frequented the Italian cities (Tac, Ann., XII, 61,
67) somewhat as the Byzantine humanist-s fre(|U(?nted
those of Northern Italy. The great municipal
families and those well established on the vast es-
tates of the central table-land seem to have clung
to the ancestral .soil with more fidelity than wa.s
shown elsewhere in the Orient. Education of the
purely literary type was universal, and to .some ex-
tent provided for by the cities and even by the Im-
perial government. We read of principals and In-
ejjectors of schools, of teachers of writing and music,
of masters of boxing, archery, and spear-throwIng, of
special privileges for teachers of rhetoric and gram-
mar; In a word the Ideal education of the Greek
mainland as crystallized in the cla-ssic writers and In
the still vigorous school of .Vthens, was in a large
measure reproduced in Asia Minor. Homer and
the Greek classics were the school books. The
chief result of it all wius a race of remarkable public
orators known as sophists or rhetoricians, wandering
academic lecturers on the glories of the past or on
commonplaces of pliilnsophy. poetry, and history.
Often bilingual, they were admired by the provincials,
who.se favour they held by flattery and sympathy,
and by careful attention to the mise en sctne — voice,
gesture, dress, attitude. Some of them, like Dio
Chrysostom, exhibit genuine native patriotism,
but in all of them there echoes a hollow declamatory
note, the best evidence of the hopeless character of
Greek paganism, of which they were now the chief
theologuins and philosophers. Their literary In-
fluence was deep and lasting, and though they were
inimical to the Christian religion, this Influence may
yet be traced in not a few of the Greek Christian
writers of their own and later times, .\part from
this class the pagan society of .\sia Minor seems to
have contributed but a few great names to the annals
of science and literature. Two of them come from
Bithynia, the al)ove-mentioned rhetorician DIo Chry-
sostom, moralist and philosopher, and .\rrian of Nico-
medla, historian of .Mexander the (ireat and popular-
izer of Epictetus. Pergamus boasts the name of the
learned physician Galen, like his earlier fellow-.XslatIc,
Xenophon of Cos, a man of scientific attainment,s
in his own department, and also of general philo-
sophic culture, but a stern enemy of the Chnstlan
religion. Nevertheless, just as Roman .\sia Minor
boasts of no first-cla.ss cities like .\lexandria or An-
tioch, but only of a great many second and third
class centres of population, so in literature the great
names are wanting, while general literary culture
and refinement, both of speech and taste, are wide-
spread, and. In the near western section, universal.
The cosmopolitan character of imperial administra-
tion, the diffusion of education, the facility of travel,
and the free use of the two great civilized tongues,
made the man of .\sia Minor, in a certain .sen.se, a
citizen of the world and fitteil him peculiarly to play
an important part from the fourth century on in
the spread of Christianity and the adaptation of its
idea-s to ( inrco-Roman society. Indi"e<l, without
some kiunvleilgc of the civilization that moulded
their youth, the Ba.sils and the Gregorys lose half
their Interest for us. (.Monun.fen. The Provinces
,of the Roman Empire, New York, 18S7, II, ,'!l.5-i)7;
Ramsay. The Historical Geography of the Roman
Empin^. London. ISno.)
Spread of Chrislianiti/ in Aifia Minor. — As every- where in the Roman empire, 8<< in .Vsia Minor it was t.— 50
the numerous JewTles in which the Christian religion
found its first adherents. In the last three pre-
Christian centuries the Seleucid kings of Syria had
transplanted from Palestine to Asia Minor thousands
of Jewish families whose descendants were soon
scattered along all the coa-sts and throughout a great
part of the interior. On Pentecost day at Jerusalem
(.•Vets. II, rt. 9, 10) there were present among the disei-
f)les "Jews, devout men out of every nation under leaven", also representatives of Pontus, Galatia. Cappadocia, kAn. and HIthynia On his several missionary journeys, St. Paul visited many parts of .\sla Minor an<l established there the first Christian chvirches; in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of .\ct-s there is a vivid and circumstantial description of all the chief phases of his Apostolic activity. His conversion of the Galatians, in particular, hasa
f)erennial Interest for Western Christians, since at Ciust a large [)ortion of that province was composed of descendants of tho.se Celt.s of Gaul who had settled there in the third century K. c. and in St. Paul's time, and for centuries afterwards, still retained their Celtic si>eech and many Celtic institutions (Lightfoot, Commentary on Galatians, London, 1,S96, l-\rt; Ramsay, '1 he Church In the Roman Empire before A. n. 170, New York, 189.3, 97-111; Idem, St. Paul, the Traveller and Roman Citizen, New York, l.SO.S, 130-1,51). Asia Minor was the principal scene of the labours of St. John; he wrote Ills .Apocalypse on the desolate Island of Patmos, and his Gos()el probably at Ephesus. He established firmly in the latter city a famous centre of Christian life, and an ancient tradition, as old as the Council of Ephesus (131), .says that the Blessed Virgin spent her last years in the vicinity of Ephesus, and passed thence to her reward. From Ephesus St. John travelled much throughout Asia Minor and has always been credited with the first establishment of many of its episcopal sees; the storj' of the re- conversion of the young robber, touchingly told in the "Quis Dives" of Clement of Alexandria exhibits the popular concept of St. John in the mind of the average Christian of Asia Minor almut the year 2(K). In the "Acts of Tlieda" It Is now recognized that we have a fragment of a life of St. Paul in Asia Minor, wTitten about the middle of the second century, though without ecclesiiistical approval, which throws no little light on .several phiuses of the great Apostle's career but .slightly touched on In the Acts and the Pauline Epistles. St. Peter, too, preached the Christian Faith in Asia Minor. His First Epistle, written frmii Rome (v, 13), is addressed "to the strangers dispersed through Pontus, Galatia, Cappa- docia, .\sla, and HIthynia", i. e. in northern, western, and central .\sla Minor. That the new religion spread rapidly is proved by the famous passage In the letter of Pliny (Ep. x, 97), Roman governor of Bithynia, addres,sed to the Emperor Trajan about 112, in which he says that the whole province is overrun with the contagion of Christianity, the temples are abandoned and the meat of the victims unsaleable, persons of evcrj' age, rank, and condition are joining the new n'liglon. At this period also the Church Historj" of Eusebius shows us the ad- mirable figure of St. Ignatius of Antioch. of whose seven letters five are addressed to Christian churches of .\sia Minor (Philailelpliia, Ei>liesus, Smyrna, Tralles, Miignesia) and reveal an advanced stage of Christian growth. It was at this time that St Polycarp of SmjTna and St. Irena>us of Lyons were born in .Vsia .Minor, Ixith prominent Christian figures of the second centurj-, the latter being the foremost ecclesiastical writer of his period.
It is in Asia Minor that synods, or frequent assem- blies of Christian bishops, first meet us jis a working ecclesiastical institution; even in remote and uncouth Cappadocia they were not Infrequent in the third
