[165] By geographical conformation Iconium is, indubitably, a city of the great Lycaonian plain. It was assigned to Lycaonia by Cicero (who visited it several times) and by Strabo; it was the capital of a Province Lycaonia after A.D. 372). This might seem on a superficial view conclusive that Iconium was a Lycaonian city. Yet the evidence that it was a Phrygian city, and so called by its inhabitants, is overwhelming: see Hastings'" Dict. Bib." s.v., and other authorities. When I first began to perceive that the people of Iconium persisted throughout the Roman period in reckoning their city as Phrygian, not Lycaonian, I knew that some strong racial feeling must have been confirmed by language : " in all probability difference of language originally emphasized their diversity from their Lycaonian neighbours". 1 In the same paragraph it was [166] pointed out that in Asia Minor through all periods of history, down even to the present day, racial distinctions have been persistently and tenaciously maintained, and that prejudice and even antipathy have been felt by each tribe or race amid that motley population against its neighbours who differed in blood and language. At the present day even the unifying influence of Mohammedan religion and Turkish speech has not been strong enough to extirpate racial hatred between different peoples of Moslem faith living side by side in separate villages on the plateau.

In the "Cities of St. Paul," pages 329, 334, it was argued that this Iconian people became strongly affected by Hellenic civilization and language, so that the city became in outward appearance Hellenic; however, "it was not a body of Greek settlers, but rather the conquering and transforming power of Hellenic manners and education, that gave a Hellenized character to this Phrygian city, . . . but the Oriental [i.e. the Phrygian] spirit revived, and the native religion and the native goddess returned". [167] Again on page 366, with regard to the period A.D. 250 - 300, "Iconium was still a Greek-speaking city (except perhaps among the humbler classes, where the Phrygian language may still have lingered)".

This opinion that the use of the language kept the racial feeling strong was confirmed last year by the discovery of two Phrygian inscriptions in the hill which covers the remains of the Seljuk Sultans' palace in the centre of Iconium. We had the fortunate opportunity in 1910 of making some excavations in the hill and thus disclosing a considerable number of inscriptions, which were built into the basement of the palace. They belong to the period about A.D. 150 to 250; the only one which is dated bears the names of the consuls of A.D. 169, but many are certainly of the third century, and one of the two which are inscribed in the Phrygian language can hardly be earlier than A.D. 240 and may be even later. 2

[166] There is therefore no doubt that the Phrygian speech was still in use among a section of the Iconian population during the third century, and a it must have been even more widely known in th6 middle of the first century. How then is this to be reconciled with two facts which are patent in the narrative of the Acts? (1) St. Paul addressed the Iconian audiences in Greek; (2) the people of Iconium who listened to Paul are called Hellenes.

These two questions are answered together There was, as has been frequently pointed out and as has just been stated in the preceding pages, a very considerable amount of Hellenization in Iconium when St. Paul first saw it. It was already a Hellenic city in organization and management. The language of public business and municipal documents was evidently Greek, and not Phrygian. The education was Hellenic. The civilization of Greece had laid its grip on the people. The educated part of the community spoke Greek, although the uneducated certainly used the Phrygian tongue. To what extent individual Iconians spoke both [167] languages remains uncertain; but evidence bearing on this interesting question may yet be discovered.

As regards name, wherever Hellenic education had laid hold of a city of the Aegean lands or Western Asia, the Greek-speaking population counted themselves Hellenes, for Hellenism in that age was not a fact of blood, but of manners, ideals and language.

Hence Paul found in Iconium the Phrygian city, just as he found in Antioch the Roman colonia, a considerable Greek-speaking population; and it was among this section of the inhabitants that he chiefly gained his converts. Many of the Jews and the Hellenes believed; others of the Jews disbelieved and opposed him, and these enemies sought allies, not among the Hellenes, but among "the nations". Luke carefully draws this distinction; and it corresponds apparently in large degree to the distinction between the uneducated and therefore Phrygian-speaking part of the population and the educated and therefore Greek-speaking. The popularly elected magistrates sided with [168] the majority, as magistrates in a democratic city must always do.

It is not, of course, for a moment to be thought that all Hellenes in Iconium were with Paul, and the whole Phrygian populace against him; but clearly Luke's words convey the impression-and they must have been intended to convey the impression-that the Hellenes, as a rule, supplied the converts, and the non-Hellenes the opponents of Paul and Barnabas. Here and everywhere Luke's words, when closely scrutinized, point to the conclusion that the educated middle class, not the aristocracy on the one hand, 3 nor the superstitious lower classes on the other, formed the bulk of the Pauline Churches.

In the end of Hadrian's reign, about A.D. 130 - 137, Iconium became a Roman coloni; but there is no reason to think that this title im- [169] plied an access of Roman or Italian settlers (as it did at Antioch, when Augustus made that city a colonia). It meant only an advance in dignity and rights.

While the Iconians clung to their Phrygian character as opposed to the Lycaonian, there is no proof and no likelihood that the citizens styled themselves "Phryges". They would, probably, have called themselves" Hellenes," as Luke implies. The name "Phrygian" was almost equivalent to "slave". Phryx occurs often as a slave-name.

The association of Hermes with Zeus in Anatolian popular religion is proved specially for the district of Phrygia adjoining Iconium towards Tyriaion, 4 and for the district of Lycaonia adjoining Lystra (or perhaps belonging to Lystra), as Mr. Calder has shown in the "Expositor," 1910, July, page 1 ff.

FOOTNOTES:

1 Church in the Roman Empire," p.38.

2 They will soon be published by my companion in exploration, Mr. W. M. Calder, in the forthcoming number of the "Journal of Hellenic Studies," 1911, Part II.

3 In a Greek city there was hardly anything that could be called an aristocracy distinguishable by any generic name or characteristic; there was only an educated and an uneducated section of the people. In the Roman colonia there was an aristocracy, viz., the Roman citizens, and Luke states clearly that in Antioch they were op posed to Paul, Acts XIII. 50.

4 “Church in the Roman Empire,'' p. 58 note.