Paul and Barnabas, with John Mark, on their first missionary journey, sailed from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia (Ac 918); and the expression reminds us of Strabo’s opinion that Perga was on the navigable river. It would See from all the passages taken together that there was a port-town on the river, ranking not as & separate wa but as part of Perga. The apostles seem not to have stayed long in Perga, and they are not said to have preached there. The failure
* See Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia (Ramsay), pt. i. p. 90f. ¢ In Lanckoronski, Stadte Pamphyliens, i. p. 30° igs
of any allusion to preaching may safely be taken as a proof that they did not preach, but for some reason changed their plan, and thus lost the com- pany of John (see PAMPHYLIA). The form of expression, ‘ Perga of Pamphylia,’ Ac 131, does not imply distinction from any other Perga (for there was no other city of that name): it means only ‘to the province Pamphylia, and specially the capital Perga.’ But on their return, perhaps two years later, Paul and Barnabas preached in Perga, though apparently with no marked success. Thereafter they went to Attalia, on the coast, to get a ship for the Syrian coast: many ships agai pass to and fro between Syria and the west, touching at Attalia, but not going up to Perga.
The early history of Christianity in Perga is very obscure, and probably its progress was slow (see PAMPHYLIA). Some martyrs— Theodorus, Philippa, Socrates, and Dionysius—at Perga (Acta Sanct., 20 Sept., p. 187) are mentioned under one of the many emperors called Antoninus,
erhaps Elagabalus. But Darga is never mentioned in the oldest Martyrologies, the Syriac and the Hieronymian ; nor is Side.
Under the Christian empire, Perga and Side, as being metropolitan bishoprics, each exercised authority over a part of the whole province ; Perga being head of Secunda Pamphylia, the western division. It is by no means certain that this division affected the civil administration ; it may have been only ecclesiastical ; but the point is not determined as yet. Hierocles, about A.D. 530,
ives only one province Pamphylia, yet he gives
rst all the Pergaian cities, and thereafter all the Sidetan, apparently implying both a knowledge of the distinction and a refusal to recognize it as ἃ real fact of government.
Perga fell into decay in later Byzantine time. It had not suflicient military strength for that disturbed period. Between A.D. 787 and 812 it was amalgamated in the ecclesiastical system with the neighbouring city of silyou as a joint metro- politan bishopric ; Sillyon had been an independent autokephalos bishopric for about a century pre- viously. Evidently, these two inland cities were both decaying in the 8th century. The ruin of Perga proceeded steadily. In A.D. 1084 Attaleia * was made a metropolis. The official lists, Notitie Episcopatuum, represent this as if Attaleia were made then an independent archbishopric, and Perga remained metropolis of Pamphylia Secunda. But in reality Perga was now a mere ecclesiastical title, and Attaleia was the residence of the real head of all the Pamphylian Church that remained : in truth, most of Pamphylia provincia was now in Sa ied infidelium, having been conceded to the
urks by the feeble competitors who were struggling with one another for the throne of the Byzantine empire after the ruin of the imperial power at the battle of Manzikert in 1071.
The true state of matters is quite frankly recog- nized in the (late) Fourth Notitia, where the entry reads: ὁ Συλαίου ὃς καὶ Πέργης λέγεται, ἀνθ᾽ οὗ ἔνι νῦν δ᾽ Ατταλίας. So, too, a MS (Tischendorf, Nov. Test. iii. Proleg. p. 629, No. 99), dated A.D. 1345 or 1445, was written by the hand of Theognostus, μητροπολί- του Ifépyns καὶ ᾿Ατταλείας, ἐξάρχου τῆς κενῆς (1.6. καινῆς) δευτέρας Παμφυλίας. Τὸ complete this account of the decay of Christian organization in Pamphylia, it may be added that Side was degraded (1283- 1321) from tenth to thirteenth in the order of rank of the metropoleis (its place being given to Philadelphia, which was then so important a city to the narrowed Christian empire); and in 1328- 1341 Side disappeared entirely from the list of metropoleis, Monemvasia as head of the whola
* Note on Tenth Notitia (Parthey, p. 214, No. 522).
PERGAMUS OR PERGAMUM
Peluponnesus taking its place.* Thus we reach the modern state of things, in which there is in ἀν δες only the single Christian dignitary at Attalia. It would ap perhaps, that, when Perga was at last definitely recognized as being in partibus infidelium, the new bishopric of Pyrgion, in the Cayster valley, was identified with it, so that the titular bishop of Perga officiated at Ἐστεῖσα with his old order of precedence pa to the official lists (which never formally accepte the real historical facts): this seems implied in the entry in a late document printed in Parthey’s Notitie Episcop. p. 314, No. 60, Πέργη τὸ νῦν Πυργίν (i.e. Ilupylov). The elevation of Pyrgion took plas between 1193 and 1199. Similarly, Proconnesos was put in the place of Mokisos-Justinianopolis t (head of Camadicta Tertia), and Monemvasia in that of Side. But in almost all such cases the official lists continued to preserve the old situation, and rarely recognized the facts of the time when they were written.