That St. Paul ‘sat’ and so spoke ‘to the women who had gathered’ there, appears to imply both a contrast to the more fend procedure of a syna- gogue (St. Paul stands to preach at Pisidian Antioch, Ac 1815, yet see Lk 4-1), and also the non-existence of many worshippers beyond the (Gentile) women who here as elsewhere, especially in Macedonia (Ac 13” 171°), were attracted to Judaism. From this class, at any rate, was drawn the first convert, Lydia the purple seller of Thya- tira, who was followed by the whole ae of which she was the mistress; her house became the home of the apostle and the centre of the Philip- pian Church (see LYDIA, and cf. Ramsay, St. Paul the Roman Traveller, p. 214).
Among the women influenced by St. Paul, either 2s an attendant at the preaching by the riverside,
* There appears to be little or no evidence for any technical
use of προσευχή in the sense of an informal ‘ place of prayer’ as oppored to ‘synagogue.’ See art. SYNAGOGUE.
PHILIPPI
or simply from the general spread of interest in the strangers and in the novel faith they were pro- pagating in dea Vn was a slave girl, who per. Poenied in a small way the functions of an oracle, and gave answers like one under inspiration to whatever questions might be asked of her, her owners, of course, reaping the benefit of the feea paid for the privilege of inquiry.
As the pagan prophetess (like the prophetesses of the Mon- tanists) was conceived of as the passive instrument of the spirit which inspired her, she would speak with its voice, not with her own, and so might be called (as Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 215) ventrilo or ἐγγαστρίμυθος (thus the Witch of Endor in the Fathers is called both πυθώνισσα and ἐγγαστρίμυθος). For several
ints in the story, compare the description of a false prophet i the Shepherd of Hermas, Mand. xi. § 12, μωσθοὺς λαμβάνω τῆς προφητιίας αὐτοῦ, ἰὰν δὲ μὴ λάβῃ οὐ προφητεύω: § 2, ὡς inl μάντιν ἴρχονται καὶ ἱπιρωτῶσιν αὐτὸν τί ἄρα ἴσται aires: § 8,
ὅλως οὐ λαλῶ ἰὰν μὴ ἱπιρωτηθῇ : § 18, κατὼ γωνίαν αὐτοῖς προφητεύω.
Daily as St. Paul passed to ‘ the (place of) prayer,’ the girl, perhaps from some fixed station at 8 street corner, annoyed him by flag ae eryin out that he and his companions were, ike herself, ‘slaves of (the) God,’ divinely inspired to preach to the lesen ree a ‘way of salvation,’—a form of recommendation not at all after the mind of St. Paul,—till at last one day he turned and made use of those powers of exorcism which the early Chris- tians never for a moment doubted that they could wield, ‘in the name of Jesus Christ,’ over the spirits that ‘ possessed ’ such pagan devotees. The
1, whose belief in him was no doubt very real, ost from that day forward her supposed gift ; and her owners (the injury to their gains making them keenly susceptible to the injury to their religion) seized Paul and his chief companion, Silas, dragged them to the forwm,—the great open space in a Roman city on to which the law-courts would look,—and brought them before the magis- trates on the double charge of violating public order (ἐκταράσσουσιν τὴν πόλιν) and of preaching rites which for Romans at least, whatever might be the case with others, it would be illegal to accept or carry out (καταγγέλλουσιν ἔθη ἃ οὐκ ἔξεστιν ἡμῖν παραδέχεσθαι οὐδὲ ποιεῖν Ρωμαίοις οὖσιν).
The magistrates are called ἄρχοντες in Ac 1619, στρατηγοί in 1620. 22. 35. 86. 38; and Prof. Ramsay (St. Pawl, p. 217, Journal of Theological Studies, Oct. 1899, Ῥ. 115) sees in St. Luke's employment of the two terms in 1619-20 proof that the book never received its finishing touches. ἄρχοντες was the no: Greek word for a supreme board of magistrates. στρατηγός was, in later times at least, used interchangeably with ἄρχων; but it was also the technical rendering of the Latin pretor (so ayrietpérnyos=propretor); and in some colonies the highest grade of magistrates were actually called after the Roman model pretores, so that it has been questioned whether this may not have been the case at Phiippi. But it would seem that this usage was confined to the period B.o. and to the oldest group of Roman colonies outside Italy, those in Gallia Narbon- ensis. It must be taken, then, as fairly certain that the official title of the superior magistrates was not pretor but as in other colonies duwmvir. [The inscription CJL πὶ. Suppl. No. 7339, which speaks of one who was Questor in Bithynia-Pontus, Cerial ®dile, Pretor-designate, Decurion or Senator, at Philippi and in Thrace, refers to the Roman Pretorship]. Duumvir, Duoviri, can be represented literally in Greek by δυανδρικός, δύο ἔδρα: but it is beyond question that a writer like St. Luke would avoid, if possible, such awkward literalism, He could only fall back on the rough equivalent στρατηγός : and his use of this Greek phrase in no way proves either that the magistrates at Philippi were pretores, or even that they were called so by courtesy.
The trial was never carried to an end (ἀκατα- xpirous, Ac 16°’); popular feeling had been roused, and the magistrates, in the exercise of their general power to detain and punish suspicious characters (Mommsen, Rémisches Strafrecht, 1899, p. 309, n. 1), summarily ordered their lictors to scourge the prisoners. A Roman citizen was by law ex- empt from a form of punishment which was looked upon as degrading (ὑβρισθέντες ἐν Φιλίπποις, 1 Th 2°); and since on one other occasion at least St. Paul claimed his rights (Ac 22”), it is possible that at Philippi too he made a protest which passed un-