James Sxbahan.
IGONIUM ('1k6viov, now Konia or Konyeh). — This city, Avhich Avas partly evangelized b}' St. Paul, occupied one of the most beautiful and fertile inland sites of Asia Minor, compared by T. LeAvin {The Life and Epistles of St. PauP, 1875, i. 144 f.) to the oasis of Damascus. Lying in a crescent of Phrygian hills at the Avestern limit of the vast upland plain of Lycaonia, and Avatered by perennial streams Avhich, through irrigation, make it to-day a garden-city, it must haA'e been a place of import- ance from the earliest times. Xenophon, the first writer Avho mentions it {Anab. I. ii. 19), says that Cyrus, travelling eastAvard, came 'to Iconium, the last city of Phrygia ; thence he pursued his route through Lycaonia.' The inhabitants always re- garded themselves as of Phrygian, not of Lycaonian, extraction, and the strongest evidence that they were right Avas their use of the Phrygian language. On the other hand, many Avr iters— Cicero {ad Fam. XV. iv. 2), Strabo (Xll. vi. 1 [p. 568]), Pliny {HN v. 25), and others — having regard to the later history of Iconium, invariably designate it as a city of Lycaonia (5'. v.). During the 3rd cent. B.C. it AA'as ruled and, to a great extent, heilenized by the Seleucids. After the battle of Magnesia (187 B.C.), it was presented by the Romans to the king of Pergamoa ; but as he never took eflective possession of it, the Galatians appropriated it about 165 B.C.
Mark Antony, the 'Icing-maker,' gave it to Polemon in 39 B.C. and transferred it in 36 to Amyntas, king of Galatia, Avhose Avide dominions, after his death in 25 B.C., Avere formed into the Roman province Galatia. Under Claudius the city was honoured Avith the name of Claud-Iconium, a proof of its strong Roman sympathies, but it Avas not raised to the rank of a Cvlonia till the reign of Hadrian. It remained a city of the province Galatia till A.D. 295, Avhen Diocletian formed tlie province Pisidia, with Antioch as its capital and Iconium as its ' second metropolis.' In 372 Iconium became the capital of the ncAV province Lycaonia, an arrangement which held good all through the Byzantine period.
When St. Luke relates that the Apostles Paul and Barnabas, being persecuted at Iconium, ' fled into the cities of Lycaonia' (Ac 14*)— an expression Avhich implies that in his view Iconium was not Lycaonian — he adheres to the popular and ignores the official geography. So central and prosperous a city, traversed by a trade-route leading direct to the Cilician Gates, and connected by a cross-road Avith the great high-Avay to the Euphrates, natur- ally attracted many traders and settlers from the outside Avorld. Well-ciiosen as a sphere of mission- ary activity, the first attempt to preach the gospel in it proved very successful, and thougii the enmity of the Jews compelled the apostles to desist from
IDOLATRY
IDOLATRY
593
their efforts for a time, St. Luke speaks of the faith of ' a great multitude both of Jews and of Greeks' (Ac 14»).
Iconium figures largely in the Galatian contro- versy. What is certain is that St. Paul and Bar- nabas preached and made many converts in the city during their first missionary campaign, and that they re-visited it on their homeward journey, ' confirming the souls of the disciples ' (14'* -^). The persecutions which St. Paul endured there are alluded to in 2 Ti 3". On the South-Galatian theory, he paid the city two more visits, if, as Ramsay and others assume, Iconium is included in 'the region of Phrygia and Galatia' (16'') and in 'the region of Galatia and Phrygia' (18^"). In the interval between the Apostle's last two visits, he received the alarming tidings that his Galatian churches — which, on this hypothesis, were Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe — were being perverted by Judaizers, whose fatal errors his Ej^istle to the Galatians was immediately written to confute. Some indication that his vehement letter and his final visit accomplished his purpose is afforded by the fact that the Galatian Church contributed part of the Gentile love-offering to the poor saints in Jerusalem (1 Co 16'). On the North -Galatian theory St. Paul, using ' Galatians ' in the popular, not the Roman, sense, wrote to churches which he had founded in Galatia proper, which Livy calls Gallo-Grsecia (see Galatia).
It is a mere legend that Sosipater (Ro 16^^) was the first and Terentius or Tertius (16-'^) the second bishop of Iconium. The city is the principal scene of the Acta Pauli et Theclte, which date back to the 2nd cent, and have a foundation in fact (see W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Bom. Emp., 1893, p. 375 tt".). The Council of Iconium was held in 235. When the city became the capital of the Seljuk State, which was founded about 1072, its splendour gave rise to the proverb, ' See all the world ; but see Kouia.' To-day it has a population of 50,000.
Literature. — W. M. Leake, Asia Minor, 1824 ; W. J. Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, 1842 ; Murray's Guide to Asia Minor, ed. C. Wilson, 1895, p. 133 f. ; W. M. Ramsay, The Cities of St. Paid, 1907, pp. 315-382.
James Strahan.
IDOLATRY. — So deep-rooted was the Jewish hatred of idolatry, and so general had been the condemnation of the practice, that our Lord found no reason for insistence upon the ^nerally accepted commandments on the subject. But as soon as the gospel message began to be preached outside the pale of Judaism, the matter became one of the pressing questions of the day. Protests against the popular practice had not been wanting from the older Greek thinkers ; Heraclitus, Xenoplianes, and Zeno had all raised their voices against image- worship. But the popular mind was not affected by their teaching, and many were the apologists who wrote in favour of the established custom. It is not surprising to read (Ac 17^^) that, when St. Paul visited Athens, ' his spirit was provoked with- in him, as he beheld the city full of idols,' even though the statement is not strictly accurate. His whole training rendered him antagonistic to any- thing approaching idolatry ; and in liis letters the same feeling is expressed. No Christian was to keep company with idolaters (1 Co 5'*"'), who could not inherit the Kingdom of God (6*, Eph 5*). He reminds the Thessalonians that they had abandoned the old idolatrous worship ' to serve the living God ' (1 Th P). Yet from the Christian point of view there is only one God, and the true Ciiristian can- not but recognize that thus ' no idol is anything in the world " (1 Co 8").