MIDIAN (AV Madian, Ac 7=«).— This was the n.ame of a people broken up into several clans and inhabiting N.W. Arabia. One clan, the Kenites, dwelt near Mount Sinai, and to it Moses fled from Pharaoh (Ex 2'^). Its chief was Jethro (or Keuel), whose daughter Moses married (v.-'). In the days of the Judges they extended further north and made inroads into central Palestine. But they were severely defeated by Gideon (Jg 6. 7), and are soon after lost to history. The town of Modiana mentioned by Ptolemy (Geog. vi. 7) as being on the N.W. coast of Arabia may be a late trace of them. Midian is probably used by later Jewish writers with a spiritual reference, symbolizing the Church's final triumph over its foes (e.g. Is 9'' 60°, Hab 3').
Literature. — G. A. Smith, BGHL, 1897, p. 625; also art. 'Midian' in i/i)i). J. W. DUXCAN.
MILETUS (M(X)7T0!).— Miletus was an ancient Greek colony on the coast of Caria, and became the most flourishing of the twelve free cities which formed the Ionian League. Five centuries before Christ it ' had attained the summit of its prosperity, and was accounted the ornament {irpSaxritia) of Ionia' (Herod, v. 28), being unquestionably the greatest of Greek cities at the time. Favourably situated on the S. shore of the Gulf of Latmos, and possessing four harbours, it controlled the trade of the rich Mseander Valley, and was without a rival in the commerce of the /Egean.
'The citizens,' says Strabo (xiv. i. 6, 7), ' have achieved many great deeds, but the most important is the number of colonies which they established. The whole Euxine, for example, and the Propontis, and many other places, are peopled with their settlers. . . . Illustrious persons, natives of Miletus, were Thales, one of the seven wise men, his disciple Anaximander, and Anaximines the disciple of Anaximander.'
After the capture of Miletus by Darius, who massacred the inhabitants (494 B.C.), and by Alex- ander the Great (334), its days of greatness and glory were ended. The trade of the Moeander Valley was diverted to Ephesus, and, before the coming of the Romans, Miletus, though still called a ' metropolis ' of Ionia, had become a second-rate commercial town, which tlie conquerors did not think it necessary to link up to any important city
by one of their great roads. Having no longer any political importance, it became more and more isolated, and nature gradually completed its ruin by filling its harbours and almost the whole gulf with the siltof the Ma>ander(l'liny,i/A'ii. 91, v.31). Its site — known as Palatia, from the ruins of its great theatre — is now 5 or 6 miles from the sea, and the island of Lade, which Strabo (xiv. i. 7) mentions as lying ' close in front of Miletus,' is now a small hill in the plain.
St. Paul did not select such a decaying city as a base of missionary operations, and its connexion with the record of his activity is a mere accident. At the end of his third journey, when he was hastening to Jerusalem to attend the Feast of Pentecost, he deliberately chose at Troas a ship which was not to touch at Ephesus, where it was probably still unsafe for him to appear, and where in any case his time would have been very short (Ac 20'°). But when the coaster in which he was sailing, and whose movements he naturally could not control, came to Miletus, he unexpectedly found that he would be detained there for some days, and it occurred to him that in the interval he might send a messenger to Ephesus — 30 miles distant in a straight line, and somewhat further by boat and road — and summon its elders to meet him.
If his ship sailed from Samos (or Trogyllium, ac- cording to D) early in the day, and thus took ad- vantage of the northerly breeze which rises in the JEgean every morning during the summer and dies away in the afternoon, he would reach Miletus, 25 (or 20) miles distant, before noon. His messenger probably did not make thegreatdetourby Heracleia at the head of the gulf, but waited for the gentle south wind (called the Imbat), which blows after sunset, to take him across to Pyrrha or Priene.
Strabo makes the ancient topography clear. ' From Heracleia to Pyrrha, a small city, is about lUO stadia by sea, but a little more from Miletus is Heracleia, if we include the windings of the bays. From Miletus to Pyrrha, in a straight line by sea, is 30 stadia ; so much longer is the journey by sailing near the land ' (XIV. i. 8, 9).
Passing through Priene, crossing Mt. Mycale, and speeding along the coast road, the messenger might reach Ephesus by midnight. The elders would travel south next day to Priene or Pyrrha, and get the northerly wind to take them over the bay to Miletus on the following morning. St. Luke writes as an eye-witness of the meeting, fellowship, and parting of St. Paul and the Ephesians, the record of which has given Miletus an abiding con- secration. The Apostle's address to the elders, with its lofty ideal of pastoral duty, reads ' as an unconscious manifesto of the essence of the life and ministry of the most influential exponent of Chris- tianity' (J. V. Bartlet, Acts [Century Bible, 1901], p. 327).