An insurrection in the reign of Trajan, in which the Jews of Cyrene massacred many Greek and Roman citizens, led to great disasters. The beauti- ful city was destroyed by the Saracens in the 4th century. Extensive ruins stUl attest its former magnificence.
LiTERATiTRE.— C. RittBT, ErdkuTide, L [Berlin, 1822]; A. F. Gottschick, Gesch. der Griindung und Bliite des hell. Staates in Eyrenaika, Leipzig, 1858 ; G. Haimann, La Cirenaica, Borne, 1882; D. C. Hogarth, in Kont/t^i/ Review, Jan. 1894.
JAM£S Stbahan.
D
DALMATI& (La.\fia.r[a).—Ti\\ about the middle of the 1st cent, this term denoted the southern part of the Roman province of Illyricum (q.v.). Thereafter it began to be extended to the whole province. Both Pliny and Suetonius reflect this change. For a time the two terms were con- vertible. From the Flavian period onward Dal- matia was the word regularly used. St. Paul, who consistently gave geographical names their Roman sense, first employed the old provincial term (Ro 15^"), but in his last Epistle (2 Ti 4^'' occurs in what is generally regarded as a genuine Pauline frag- ment) he adopted the new designation. In his own missionary progress he went as far as the frontiers of Illyricum [ixexpi- rov'lXkvptKoD), but probably did not enter it. His lieutenant Titus took possession of Dalmatia for Christ. James Strahan.
DAMARIS. — Damaris was converted by the
preaching of St. Paul at Athens (Ac 17^). The name is probably a corruption of Damalis (' heifer '), a popular name among the Greeks. St. Chrysostom {de Sacerd. iv. 7) makes Damaris the wife of Dion- ysius the Areopagite, as does the Latin of Codex E (' cum uxore suo '), though the Greek has only ' a woman.' W. M. Ramsay (St. Paul, 1895, p. 252) suggests that she was one of the educated eralpai. She seems to have been a person of some import- ance, since her name is mentioned, and it is open to doubt whether a prominent Athenian woman would have been present. Codex Bezae omits all reference to her.
VOL. I. — 1 8
LrrERATimE. — F. Blass, Corn, tn loe. ; W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, London, i893, p. 161 ; J. Feiten, Apostelgegchichte, Freiburg L B., 1892, p. 337.
F. W. WORSLEY.
DAMASCUS,DAMASCENES.— Damascus (Aa/iao-- /c6s) cannot now be regarded as the oldest city in the world, but it has a surer title to fame in its possession of the secret of eternal youth. While Tadmor and Palmyra, Baalbek and Jerash, have only a 'glory hovering round decay,' Damascus is stUl ' the head of Syria,' the queen of Oriental cities. The creations of architectural genius have their day and cease to be, but Damascus is the perennial gift of Nature. The green oasis between Mount Hermon and the desert must always be a theatre of human activity. Wheresoever the river comes, there is life. Damascus has no means of self- defence, has never done anything memorable in warfare, has been captured and plundered many times, and more than once almost annihilated, but it has always quickly recovered itself, and to-day the white smokeless city, embowered in its gardens and orchards and surrounded by its hundred villages, is to every Arab what it was to young Muhammad gazing down upon it from the brow of Salahiyeh — the symbol of Paradise.
During the centuries of Greek and of Roman sway in Syria, Damascus had to yield precedence to Antioch. The Hellenic city in the Levant became the first metropolis of Gentile Christianity, and organized the earliest missions to the Western nations. Yet in a sense the religion of Europe
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came by the way of Damascus, which was the scene of the conversion of the greatest of all mission- aries. It is in connexion with this event alone that the city is ever mentioned in the NT. The story is told three times in Acts (9^-^ 223-1'^ -IQ^--").
In the 1st cent, of our era the Jewish colony in Damascus was large and influential. During a tumult in the reign of Nero 10,000 Jews were massacred. Josephus indicates the extent of Jewish proselytism in the city when he states that the Damascenes ' distrusted their own Avives, who were almost all addicted to tlie Jewish religion' {BJ II. XX. 2). It is not known when or how Christianity first came to Damascus, There were doubtless Syrian Jews in Jerusalem at every feast of Pentecost, though none are mentioned in Ac 2. Damascus Avas the tirst of the ' foreign cities ' (Ac 26'^) from which the Jewish authorities resolved to root out the Nazarene heresy. St. Paul came to it as a voluntary inquisitor, to call the Christian Jews to account for their apostasy. He was armed with ' the authority and commission of the chief priests ' (Ac 26^-).
' In a certain sense the Sanhedrin exercised jurisdiction over every Jewish community in the world. . . . Its orders were regarded as binding throughout the entire domain of orthodox Judaism. It had power, for example^ to issue warrants to the congregations (synagogues) in Damascus for the apprehension of the Christians in that quarter ' (Schiirer, HJJP ii. i. [ISSS] 185).
St. Paul had instructions to deal summarily ' with any that were of the way ' (Ac 9-), but the letters which he carried 'for the synagogues' (9-) were never delivered, and his ' commission ' (26^^) was never executed. One of the Christians whom he intended to ' bring bound to Jerusalem ' (9"^) baptized him (9^^), and 'with the discijjles who were at Damascus' (9^^) he enjoyed his first Christian fellowship. None of them were among the confessors who afterwards haunted him 'with their remembered faces, dear men and women whom' he 'sought and slew.' In Damascus he ' preached Jesus ' (9'-"), the substance of his gospel Ijeing ' that he is the Son of God,' ' that this is the Christ' (9-**--^). The incident of St. Paul's escape from conspirators by his being let down over the city wall in a basket (q.v.) is recorded by the writer of Acts (Ac 9-^"^^), and confirmed in one of St. Paul's own letters (2 Co 1132). while St, Luke ascribes the plot against him to the Jews, St. Paul relates that it was the etlmarch under Aretas the king who guarded the city of the Damascenes to take him. The two versions of the story can be reconciled by supposing that the governor turned :>ut the garrison and set a watch at the instigation oi influential Jews, who represented St. Paul as a listurber of the peace of the city. The alleged iscendancy of the Nabataean king in Damascus at that time raises a difficult historical problem, which has an important bearing upon the chrono- logy of the primitive Church. This point is dis- cussed under ARABIA, Aretas, Ethnarch,