[156] It is a cardinal point in the South Galatian view that there was a region of the Province called Phrygia, and that this region included the cities of Iconium, Antioch of Pisidia, 1 and Apollonia. One inscription 2 mentions Phrygia as forming part of the Province Galatia. Now the greater part of Phrygia was in the Province Asia. This Galatic Phrygia must therefore have been a smaller part outside the Asian frontier; and Ptolemy depends on authorities who recorded 1 that there was in the Province Galatia [157] a region Phrygia containing the cities Apollonia, Antioch, and others. Strabo also describes both those cities as being in the country Phrygia; and numerous witnesses prove that they were included in the Province Galatia. Still there was naturally a craving for an inscription which stated simply and directly that Antioch was reckoned by the Romans to be part of a region called Phrygia.

The nearest approach to such proof lay in two inscriptions, which seemed to mention Phrygian Antioch; but both were expressed in poetic phraseology; and one of these was inter- [158] preted by Kaibel as alluding not to Antioch, but to Magnesia on the Maeander, 4 while in the other the name Antioch was restored. The former therefore is unconvincing.

The latter inscription is engraved on a large basis intended to bear a statue. Professor Sterrett copied it in 1884: it mentions on one side of the stone a "regionary centurion," who was honoured by the city of Antioch; and Professor Sterrett altered his own copy to "legionary centurion". My protest against this change was approved by Professor O. Hirschfeld of Berlin, who in discussing the police system of the Roman Empire regarded this "regionary centurion as an officer charged with the maintenance of peace in the region of which Antioch was capital. This diversity of reading, however, encouraged others to doubt the force of the inscription, especially as the name of the region seemed not to be expressly stated. On the adjoining side of the stone Prof. Sterrett copied a [159] mutilated inscription relating to the same centurion, whose statue once stood on the basis. In slightly differing ways he and I partly restored this mutilated inscription; he read "the Mygdonian city of the Antiochians" ; I proposed "Mygdonian Antioch," which made a hexameter line. Still the inscription was incomplete; and there can never be any finality about an incomplete restoration. There could be no doubt that "Mygdonian" was a mere poetic epithet equivalent to "Phrygian"; but it was not absolutely certain that the epithet was applied to Antioch; 5 and, if it were so applied, it might only indicate that the city had been originally Phrygian.

In 1911 we found the basis, half buried in a Turkish cemetery and turned upside down. I got a man to dig it up, but the difficult side was in deep shadow, and could not be read until the sun reached it. I could only see that the important word was neither {Antioxeia} as I proposed, nor {Antioxeôn polis} as Sterrett restored, [160] but something quite different. 6 This was disquieting, and threatened to give a different and less illuminative turn to the inscription.

During the next two days we were wholly taken up with another more important discovery of which more will be said elsewhere. At last, on the morning of our departure from Antioch, we prepared to clear up the difficulty, while the morning light ~hone on the undeciphered side. Our travelling companions 7 went off to the stone, while Lady Ramsay and I waited to see the camp packed, and then followed them. We met them half-way on their return. They had the complete text, which was far better than I had ever imagined: {tonde se Mugdoniê Dionusion anti biou pollôn kai tên eirê:nês stemma}.

Mygdonia, therefore, is used not as an adjective, but as a noun. The country Mygdonia at Antioch can of course be nothing but Phrygia expressed by a poetic synonym. Mygdon was [161] an ancient Phrygian king, and Mygdonia was either a district of Phrygia, [162] guardian of peace. 8 The opening word {tonde} implies that a statue was placed on the basis. The construction would then be perfectly simple, were it not for the concluding word {stemma}, which Professor Sterrett eliminated conjecturally by altering his own copy to read {eneka}. There is however as little doubt about the reading in this case as there is in regard to {regeônarion}.

The text is probably to be explained as an example of double accusative, similar to but even more glaringly ungrammatical than the series of cases explained in "Studies in the History of the Eastern Roman Provinces," p. 278. 9 The meaning would then be "Thy statue here, a Dionysius (in marble), Mygdonia (erected, and honoured thee with) a crown, in return for (guarding) the life of many and (preserving) the peace".

The inscription belongs to the middle of the [163] third century after Christ or later. There was therefore alike in the first century and in the third a region ({xôra}, regio) of the Province Galatia called by the names Phrygia and Mygdonia, practically synonymous. To any one that has experience of Greek geographical terminology, there can be no more precise, definite and clear way of defining this region than the words of Luke in Acts XVI. 6, {tên Phrugian kai Galatikêm xôan}, "The region which is from one point of view (i.e. racially) Phrygian and from another point of view (i.e. administratively) Galatic".

Mr. W. M. Calder will, I hope, soon publish an argument, in which he attempts to mark out the bounds of Galatic Phrygia or Mygdonia according to the extension of the Phrygian language. A negative argument can also be derived from the use of other languages than Phrygian. Thus Lystra is proved to be beyond the bounds of Phrygia, not merely by the express statement of Acts XIV. 6, but also by the use of the Lycaonian language in the city; and wherever the use of the Pisidian tongue can [164] be demonstrated or made probable, the presumption is correspondingly strong that we are outside of Galatic Phrygia and in Galatic Pisidia. Antioch was, strictly speaking, a Phrygian city towards Pisidia, as Strabo defines it.

FOOTNOTES:

1 1 Originally called Antioch towards Pisidia (Strabo about A.D. 19): then Pisidian Antioch : then Antioch of Pisidia. 2 C.I.L., iii. 6818. 3 The evidence is a little complicated, and depends on the restoration of the geographical authorities employed by Ptolemy. In V.4 he gives a list of cities in Pisidian Phrygia (the same region which Strabo calls “Phrygia towards Pisidia"). That region was part of Galatia Provincia from 25 B.C. to A.D. 72. Thereafter the largest part of Pisidian Phrygia was included in the new Province Lycia-Pamphylia, and Ptolemy intended to omit from the list the two Phrygian cities which were left to Galatia, but by error he retained Antioch in the list. He mentions also in V. 5 both Antioch and Apollonia in the Province Galatia as cities of the district Pisidia but the small parts of Phrygia and Pisidia which were left to Galatia were in the Roman lists commonly called Pisidia (see Histor. Geogr." p. 253), though the natives of Galatic Phrygia clung to the racial name Phrygia or Mygdoma as late as the third century. Much the larger part of Pisidia proper, also, was assigned to the new Province Lycia-Pamphylia from AD. 74 onwards.

4 “Cities of St. Paul," pp. 260, 445; "Histor. Comment. on Galatians," p. 201; Kaibel, "Inscr. Graec. Ital." etc., no. 933.

5 Of the word "Antioch" ANI was read on the stone by Professor Sterrett, but all the rest was conjectural.

6 I could see that {anti} was the beginning of the last word or words, but the rest was not {oxeia}.

7 Mr. W. M. Calder, Brasenose, Oxford, and Miss M.. M. Hardie, Newnham College, Cambridge, both former pupils of my own in Aberdeen.

7 De Vit. Onomasticon (added to Forcellini Lexicon), Mygdonia Regio Phrygiae memorata, Pun. V. 41, 1, Solin 40, 9, Capell 6, Sec 686.

8 The exact title at an earlier period would have been Eirenarch.

9 Several of these cases had caused trouble to interpreters; but when the class of examples is recognized and placed in order side by side, all difficulty disappears.