practice at Smyrna to present a crown to the priest who superintended the religious ceremonial, at the end of his year of office. Several persons of both sexes have the title of ort^aM/^dpoi in the inscriptions; and the context shows that they possessed great social con- sideration. These allusions derive additional force from the superstitious regard in which the Smyni*ans held chance phrases (K\i]S6vtg) as a material for augury. They had a kXi]S6vwi' Itpiiv just above the city outside the walls, in which this mode of divination was the or- dinary one (Fausan. ix, 11, 7).
III. Present Condi/ion. — From the convenience of its situation, Smyrna has still maintained its rank as a great city and the central emporium of the Levantine trade ; and seeing the terrible decay which has fallen upon the numerous great and beautiful cities of Asia Minor, its relative rank among the existing cities of that region is probably greater than that which it an- ciently bore. The Turks call it Izmir. It is a better- built town than Constantinoi)le, and in proportion to its size there are few places in the Turkish dominions which have so large a population. It is computed at from 180,000 to 200,000, according to the season of the year; and the Franks compose a far greater proportion than in any other town of Turkey ; and they are gen- erally in good circumstances. Next to the Turks the Greeks form the most numerous class of inhabitants, and they have a bishop and two churches. The unusu- ally large proportion of Christians in the town renders it peculiarly unclean in the eyes of strict Moslems, whence it has acquired among them the name of Giaour Izmir, or Intidel Smyrna. There are in it 20,000 Greeks, 8000 Armenians, 1000 Europeans, and 9000 Jews : the rest are Moslems.
The prosperity of Smyrna is now rather on the in- crease than the decline; houses of painted wood are giving way in all directions to mansions of stone ; and probably not many years will elapse before the modern
SMY^RNA
A
31
Y
Xatin otj ^
IX.— G G G
SMVUXA
834 SMYTONITE CONTROVERSY
town mav not iiiiWDrthily rojircsont that city which the aiKKnt.-i ilclii,'liiwl to call •'(he lovely— the crown of Ionia— the ornament of Asia." It is the seat of a pashalik. anil is the centre of all important movements in Asia Minor.
.Smyrna stands at the foot of a range of mountains which enclose it on three sides. The only ancient ruins are uiK)n Hie mountains behind the town, and to the south. U(M)n the hi,i;liest summit stands an old (Iila|)idate<l ca.stle, which is supposed by some to mark the previous (but not the mngt ancient) site of the city; frequent eartlupiakes havini; dictated the necessity of removing it to the plain below, and to the lower de- clivities of the mountains. Mr. Ariindell says, "Few of the Ionian cities have I'urnislied more relics of an- tiquity than Smyrna; but the convenience of trans- porting them, with the number of investigators, has exhausted the mine. It is therefore not at all wonder- ful that of the stoas and temples the very ruins have vanished; and it is now extremely ditHcult to deter- mine the sites of any of the ancient buililings, with the exception of the stailiuni, the theatre, and the Temple of Jupiter Acneus, which was within the acropolis" {DUcoceries in A.tUi .l/i«o?-, ii, 407). Of the stadium here mentioned the ground-plot only remains, it being stripped of it3 seats and marble decorations. It is supposed to be the place where Polycarp, the disci- ple of John, and probably "the angel of the Church of Smyrna" (John ii. « ). to whom the Apocalyptic mes- sage was addressed, suffered martyrdom. The Chris- tians of .Smyrna hold the memory of this venerable person in high honor, and go aniuially in procession to his supposeil tomb, which is at a short distance from the place of martyrdom.
Smyrna has a deep interest to Christians from this fact. During one of the Koman persecutions many Christians suffered the most dreadful torments here. They were put to death at the stake, or by wild beasts in the am[>hitheatre; and the only test applied to them was whether they would throw a few grains of incense into the fire as a sacrifice to the genius of the emperor, or whether they woidd refuse. A circular letter ad- dresseil to the churches in the Christian world from that of Smyrna gives a most interesting account of Polycarp's death, and Neander has admirably trans- lated, abriilged. and systematized it. The proconsul before whom I'olycarp was accused did all he could to save the venerable bishop, now in his ninetieth year; and when, like Pontius I'ilate l)efore him, he found it impotvsible to restrain the popular fury, he refused to allow any wild beasts to be let loose, and Polycarp, abandoned to the populace, was fastened to a stake and »of)n surroinided with flames. An old tradition states that the tlames formed an arch above the head of the martyr, and left him uninjured; seeing this, a Roman
soldier pierced him to the heart witli a spear, and the tire then did its olhce, and consumed the lifeless body. It is, however, as Neander observes, more rational to be- lieve that Polycarp died as Ridley and Latimer have done in more moiicrn times. It is by no means ini- pnibable that I'olycarp was confined in some one of the arched vaults witliin the acropolis, which remain to this day. An ancient mosque is also standing, which is said to" have been the Church of St. John ; but tra- dition is not much to be depended upon for assigning the correct site to such buildings, and the edifices of Smyrna are constructed of a white and peculiarly fri- able marble not adapted for great permanency. The Apocaly])tic message to the Church at Smyrna is one wiiich convej's no reproach, and it has been often brought forward as a proof of the inspiration of the book in which it is found, that Smyrna has been always a flourishing city, and that there has been, ever since the days of the apostle, a numerous congregation of Chris- tians among her inhabitants. This, however, has not been, strictly speaking, the case, and it is easy to carry such a mode of proving the truth of Scripture too far; but it is satisfactory to know that true religion is greatly on the increase in this important city, and that the labors of Protestant missionaries have been abundantly successful.