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COLOSS.E
COLOSSI
from the city of Rome itself to some outlying part of Italy or (later) to some other land. These men remained Roman citizens after transference, and were collectively, in fact, a portion of Rome itself planted amidst a community not itself possessed of Roman citizenship. The object of the earliest colonies was the holding in subjection to Rome of the particular country in Avhich they were planted. It was not usually a fresh city that was thus founded. The rule was that a community was already resident there, and the body of Roman soldiers Avas stationed thei'e, thus making the place into a garrison city. The colonice were con- nected by military roads, beginning at Rome, and troops could be marched along those roads to relieve the colon i(e in the shortest possible time, supposing a rising [tumult as) should occur, too powerful to be quelled by the local garrison. (A good example is the case of the Lombardy Plain and the cam- paigns of Marius.) A Roman colony, then, means a garrison city, and implies the presence of Roman soldier-citizens.
This was the Roman colonia in origin and pur- pose. We find, however, that, after danger from the enemy had ceased, colonice continued to be planted during the Empire in peaceful districts. This new style of colonia continued to mean a body of Roman citizens, but the military aspect was lost sight of. It was an honour for a provincial ';ity to be made into a colonia, because this was a proof that it was of special importance, specially dear to the Emperor, and worthy to be the residence of Roman citizens, who were the aristocracy of the provincial towns in which they lived.* (It was not till A.D. 212, the time of Caracalla, that all the subjects of the Roman Empire received the Roman citizenship. )
A number of towns mentioned in the NT were colonice at the time the events narrated there took place: Corinth (since 44-43 B.C.), Puteoli (since 194 B.C.), Philippi (42 B.C.), Pisidian Antioch (before 27 B.C.), Syracuse (21 B.C.), Troas (between 27 and 12 B.C.), Lystra (after 12 B.C.),t Ptolemais (before A.D. 47). All these places are mentioned by the writer of Acts, and yet to one only does he attach the epithet ' colony,' namely Philippi. The whole manner in which he refers to this place shows personal pride in it, and it is hard to refrain from believing that he had a special connexion with it.
The comparatively large proportion of places holding the dignity of colony, which were visited by St. Paul, illustrates very forcibly the plan of his evangelization. He aimed at planting the gospel in the leading centres, knowing that it would spread best from these.
Literature. — Kornemann, art. ' Coloniae ' in Pauly-Wissowa. (Kornemann's statement that there is no up-to-date comprehen- sive work on colonice outside Italy appears to be still true.) On Philippi as colonia see W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, London, 1895, p. 200 ff. ; Iconium not a colonia till Hadrian, see W. M. Ramsay, Historical Vorninentari/ on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, do. 1899, pp. 123, 218 f., and later works. A. SOUTER.
COLOSS^ffi (KoXoo-o-al in the opening of the Epistle, P ; in the title, whicli is not original, there is about equal authority for KoXocxcyaels andKoXao-craets ; in the subscription the authority for KoXao-o-aeis predomin- ates).— The name was given to an ancient Phrygian city on the S. bank of the Lycus (Churuk Su), an affluent of the Myeander. It was situated at the lower end of a narrow glen about 10 miles long. Herodotus says that at Colossae ' the river Lycus, falling into a chasm of the earth, disappears ; tlien, reappearing at a distance of about five stadia, it
* The British colonice were Colchester, Gloucester, York, and Lincoln, t Not Iconium till the time of Hadrian.
discharges itself into the Maeander' (vii. 30). No such chasm, however, exists at Colossa?, and the historian has apparently misreported what he heard of the underground passage of the river at its source, as accurately described by Strabo (XII. viii. 16).
Colossos was one of three sister cities which re- ceived the gospel about the same time (Col 4^*), Laodicea Ij'ing about 10 miles farther down the Lj^cus valley, and facing Hierapolis, which was picturesquely seated on a plateau 6 miles to the north. Behind Colossteand Laodicea rose the mighty snow-capped range of Cadmus [Baba Dagh, ' Father of mountains '), over 8000 ft. above sea-level. Com- manding the approaches to a pass in this range, and traversed by the great trade-route between Ephesus and the Euphrates, Colossa; was at one time a place of much importance. Herodotus (op, cit. ) calls it ' a great city of Phrygia,' and Xenophon describes it as irdXiv olKOvp.ivriv fv5alfj.ova Kai /j-eydXriv [Anab. I. ii. 6). But as Laodicea and Hierapolis grew in importance, Colossse waned, and in the beginning of the first century Strabo reckons it as no more than a TroXicr/xa (Xll. viii. 13). Pliny, in- deed, names it among the oppida celeberrima of Phrygia [HN v. 41), but he is merely alluding to its illustrious past. It was visited, however, by streams of travellers passing east and west, who made it conversant with the freshest thought of the time. Its jiermanent population consisted mostly of Phrygian natives and Greek colonists. Jews had also been attracted to the busy trade- centres of the Lycus valley, a fact which accounts for the Jewish complexion of some of the errors re- futed in the Colossian Epistle. Antiochus the Great (223-1 87 B.C.) transplanted 2000 Jewish families from Babylonia and Mesopotamia to Lydia and Phrygia (Jos. Ant. XII. iii. 4). The freedom and prosperity which they enjoyed probably induced many others to follow them, and there is a bitter saying in the Babylonian Talmud that the wine and baths of Plirygia separated the ten tribes from their brethren [Shab. 147'', quoted by A. Neubauer, Geogr. du Tahjiud, Paris, 1868, p. 315). Cicero (pro /'Zacc. 28) speaks of the multitudo Judoiorum who inhabited the district in his time.