imperial act, as capital of the province. The pro- vincial council necessarily made its temple and meeting-place first in the provincial capital ; and by degrees the modification was introduced that temples and meetings were arranged also in other great cities of the province. H
Asia was peculiar in
Sie so many meeting-places of the provincial council; in many provinces there was one single beth | ape of meeting for the council. Ephesus built a temple of Augustus before B.c. 5;¢ but this seems to have been only a dedication by the city, and not arranged and sanctioned by the provincial council ;§ and it stood in the sacred precinet of Artemis, not in a separate precinct of its own.
Even in the beginning of the 2nd cent. Per- gamum probably still ranked officially as the capital, for it had got a second temple of the Emperors, and the title ‘twice Neokoros,’ before A.D. 123 (and probably already in the time of Trajan), whereas Ephesus acquired these honours only late in the reign of Hadrian, between the proconsulate of Peduczeus Priscinus, A.D. 127, and that of Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus about A.D. 130 or 135.||
Should we not, then, explain by this primacy in the worship of the Emperors the statement in Rev 2'8, that ‘the throne of Satan’ is at Pergamum ? The city was still officially the capital of the province, and, especially, it was recognized as the chief centre of the imperial worship, in which the unity and loyalty of the rovince was expressed. In this latter point lay the peculiar aggravation and abomination. It was the worship of the Emperors that was recognized, when the Apoc. was written, as the special foe of Christianity, as Antichrist, as Satan. It was the refusal of the Christians to pay the proper respect to the em- peror by performing the prescribed acts of ritual and worship in the imperial religion that formed the test by which they could be detected, and the reason why they were outlawed: their refusal
* See ASIAROH.
+ This, though regarded as paceny certain by Buchner, dé Neocoria, p. 88, is far from being 80 well established as he repre- sents. It is not at all certain that there was a temple of Claudius at Ephesus. The temple built by the council at Ephesus Is called ‘temple of the Emperors’ in Inser. Brit. Mus. No. 481, and Smyrn. Mous. iii. p. 180.
1 See Hicks, /nserip. of Brit. rae: No. 522 (where date 8.6. ὁ should be corrected to 5).
§ Buchner (loc. cit.) seems to have failed to observe the exist ence of this temple at Ephesus : he never refers to it.
i Buchner, de Neocoria, p. 59; CIG 2965, 2966, 29870.
PERGAMUS OR PERGAMUM
was interpreted as a proof of disloyalty and treason, for it was a refusal to acquiesce in, and to be members of, the imperial unity.” Pergamum, as the chief centre of that imperial worship for the province, was the seat and ‘the throne of Satan.’
We are too ignorant of the details regarding the imperial worship in Asia to be able to say exactly what was panied in that primacy. The Council of Asia met also at other pice: as Ephesus (hence the presence of the Asiarchs there, Ac 19), Smyrna, Sardis; but some sort of pre-eminence belonged to Pergamum at least as late as A.D. 127 (as has been stated above). Now Hadrian visited Pergamum Popely in A.D. 123.t He was again in Asia in
29, when he visited Laodicea in the Lycus valley, and presumably Ephesus and Tralleis. His in- terest in and knowledge of the province, the free- dom with which he changed old institutions to suit the circumstances of the day, and the fact that he not merely permitted Ephesus to attain a second Neokorate (like Pergamum), but also struck imperial silver coins bearing the type and name of DIANA EPHESIA (thereby pecs pas her as 8 Roman deity),t all combine to prove that it was he who recognized the overwhelming practical im- portance of Ephesus, and transferred the primacy of the see from Pergamum to Ephesus about A.D. 129. If this be so (and it seems practically certain), then we have an important piece of evi- dence about Rev 24: that passage was written before A.D. 129.
But the order of enumeration of the Seven Churches of Asia, beginning with Ephesus, seems to start from the capital, and then to go round the important cities in geographical order—Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Lao- dicea. The explanation probably is that a con- flict existed between the official view and the popular view: the former still regarded Per-
amum as the capital, while the latter had regard
the practical fact that Ephesus was the greatest and most important city of Asia, on the main route of communication, whereas Pergamum lay on a bypath, and had only a historical title to the primacy in Asia. In this case the ecclesiastical organization accepted the facts of the situation from the time of Paul onwards; so also did the emperor Caligula in a decree quoted by Dion Cassius, lix. 28. 1 (unless he was following chrono- logical order). ven after it lost the pre-eminence in the pro- vince, Pergamum continued to be a great and ially honourable city. It was granted a third eokorate by Caracalla; and no Asian city ever attained more. This title has often been mis- apprehended by the older writers: when a city styles itself Neokoros on coins and in inscriptions, this always implies ‘warden of a temple dedicated to the imperial worship.’ When a city has the title ‘thrice Neokoros,’ this implies three separate temples of Emperors, each with its separate priest- oad and services and staff of attendant ministers. Ephesus, exception to the rule, sometimes