But, although St. Paul cherishes this assurance and has no doubt or misgiving as to his personal salvation, this assurance does not cause him to slacken in the fulfilment of service and the pursuit of the eternal prize. Even he is moved by the wholesome fear lest he who had preached to others should yet himself become a castaway (aSoKiixo^,
1 Co 9^), and be cast out of the lists as one who had not contended according to the rules.
' We must remember,' says a Christian writer before the middle of the 2nd cent., ' that he who strives in the corruptible contest, if he be found acting unfairly, fouling a competitor in the race, or trying with guile to o\erreach his antagonist, is taken away and scourged and cast forth from the lists. Wliat then think ye ? If one does anything unseemly in the incorruptible contest, what shall be have to bear?' (2 Clem. vii.). It is in the same spirit that the author of the Didache, writing before the close of the 1st cent., says : ' For the whole period of your faith will profit you nothing unless ve be found full^- perfected at the last' {Did. xvi.
2 ; of. Ep. of Barn. iv. 9).
Literature. — F. H. R. von Frank, Sustem of Christian Cer- taintii, Eng. tr., Edinburgh, lsS6 ; W.'j. Townsend, H. B. Workman, and G. Eayrs. Xeiv Hist, of Methmliitii, London, 1901): R. Seeberg-, in PiJES vi. 160: the art. 'Assurance,' in HDB, SDB, and DCG ; art. 'Certitude,' in CE, and art. 'Cer- tainty (Religious),' in ERE, with the literature there cited.
T. NicoL. ASYNCRITUS {' Aai'iy Kpiros, or 'AcrvvKpiros, a Greek name). — The fir.st of a gToup of five names (all Greek) of persons ' and the brethren with them '
saluted by St. Paul in Ro 16^*. Nothing is known of Asyncritus or of any member of this group. It is suggested that together they formed a separate €KK\riaia, or church, within the Church of Rome. That such little communities existed in Rome, each with its own place of meeting, would appear from other similar phrases in Ro 16 : ' the church that is in their house ' (v.^), ' all the saints that are with them' (v.'^^), and from the references to the Christian members of the ' households ' of Aristo- bulus and Narcissus (vv.^**- "). This, of course, assumes the Roman destination of these saluta- tions. If the Ephesian destination be preferred, there is evidence of similar house-churches at Ephesus in 1 Co 16'*', and perhaps in Ac 20'-'" (see art. Patrobas). The name Asyncritus has been found in an inscription of a freedman of Augustus (see Sanday-Headlam, Romans^, 1902, p. 427).
T. B. Allworthy.
ATHENS CA^^wi). — Athens, which St. Paul visited in the autumn of A.D. 48 (Harnack), or 50 (Turner), or 51 (Ramsay), was now in .some respects verj' diti'erent from the city of Pericles and Plato. Her political and commercial supremacy was gone. Greece had for two centuries been the Roman province of Achaia, of which Athens was not the capital. The governor had his residence at Corinth, and the merchant-princes had forsaken the Pirteus for Leclieum and Cenchreae. But Athens was still the must beautiful and brilliant of cities, the home of philosophy, the shrine of art, the fountain-head of ideals. As the metropolis of Hellenism .she had, indeed, a wider and more pervasive influence than ever, which the Roman conquerors, like the Macedonians before them, did their best to extend. ' From the Philhellenic standpoint, doubt- less, Athens was the masterpiece of the world ' (T. ]Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Emjtire-, London, 1909, 1. 258). To be among her citizens was to breathe the atmosphere of culture. Her Lyceum by the Ilissus, her Academy by the groves of Cephissus, her Porch in the Agora, ami her Garden near at hand, were still frequented by Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epicureans. Her University drew to itself a host of foreign students, especially from Rome, and became the model of the younger foundations of Alexandria, Antioch, and Tarsus.
Neither the Republic nor the Empire ever fully applied the subject-relation to Greece, and the Athenians weie always treated witii special kind- ness. 'The Romans, after their conquest, hnding them governed by a democracy, maintained their independence and liberty' (Strabo, IX. i. 20). Even in the INIithridatic war, when an ordinary town behaving as Athens did would have been razed to the ground, ' the citizens were pardoned, and, to this time, the city enjoys liberty, and is respected by the Romans' (ib.).
The outward aspect of Athens was little altered in St. Paul's time. Plutarch, who wrote half a cent- urj' later, says in regard to Pericles' public edifices : ' In beauty each of them at once appeared venerable as soon as it was built ; but even at the present day the work looks as fresh as ever, for they bloom with an eternal freshness which defies time, and seems to make the work instinct with an unfading spirit of youth ' (Pericles, xiii. ). Cicero conveys the impression which the city made upon every cul- tivated mind in his time: 'Valde me Athenae delectarunt, urbe dumtaxat et urbis ornamento, . . . sed multum ea philosophia' [Ep. ad Att. v. 10). The Philhellenism of the Empire surpassed that of the Republic, and of all the Roman bene- factors of Athens the greatest was Hadrian, who not only completed the temple of Zeus Olympius, which had remained unfinished for 700 years, but embelli.-hed the city with many other public build