MIDST OF THE Council of AREOPAGUS AND SAID . . .
16
242 Athens and Corinth. Chap. XI.
(3$) THUS PAUL WENT FORTH FROM THE MIDST OF THEM.
The explanatory clause in v. 18 is wanting in the Bezan Text and an old Latin Version, and is foreign to Luke's fashion of leaving the reader to form his own ideas with regard to the scene. It is apparently a gloss, suggested by v. 32, which found its way into the text of almost all MSS.
The different opinions of the philosophers in v. 18 are purposely placed side by side with a touch of gentle sarcasm on their inability, with all their acuteness, to agree in any opinion even about Paul's meaning. The first opinion is the most interesting. It contains a word of characteristically Athenian slang, Spermoldgos, and is clearly caught from the very lips of the Athenians (as Dr. Blass happily puts it). This term was used in two senses — (1) a small bird that picks up seeds for its food, and (2) a worthless fellow of low class and vulgar habits, with the insinuation that he lives at the expense of others, like those disreputable persons who hang round the markets and the quays in order to pick up anything that falls from the loads that are carried about. Hence, as a term in social slang, it connotes absolute vulgarity and inability to rise above the most contemptible standard of life and conduct ; it is often connected with slave life, for the Spermoldgos was near the type of the slave and below the level of the free man ; and there clings to it the suggestion of picking up refuse and scraps, and in literature of plagiarism without the capacity to use correctly. In ancient literature plagiarism was not disapproved when it was done with skill, and when the idea or words taken from another were used with success :
Sec. 2. In the University at Athens. 243
the literary offence lay in the ignorance and incapacity displayed when stolen knowledge was improperly applied.
To appreciate fully a term of social slang requires the greatest effort to sympathise with and recreate the actual life of the people who used the term. Probably the nearest and most instructive parallel in modern English life to Spermoldgos is "Bounder," allowing for the difference be- tween England and Athens. In both there lies the idea of one who is " out of the swim," out of the inner circle, one who lacks that thorough knowledge and practice in the rules of the game that mould the whole character and make it one's nature to act in the proper way and play the game fair. The English term might be applied to a candidate for a professorship, whose life and circumstances had lain in a different line and who wanted knowledge and familiarity with the subject ; and that is the way in which St. Paul is here called a Spermoldgos, as one who aped the ways and words of philosophers. Dean Farrar's rendering, " picker-up of learning's crumbs," is happy, but loses the touch of slang.
The general tendency of recent opinion is that Paul was taken to the Hill of Ares, in order to give an address in quiet surroundings to a crowd of Athenians on the spot where the Council that derived its name from the hill sat to hold solemn trials for murder ; and the view taken in the Authorised Version and the ancient authorities, such as Chrysostom and Theophylact, that Paul was subjected to a trial before the Council, is rejected on the ground that in the proceedings there is nothing of a judicial type, no accuser, no accusation, and no defensive character in Paul's speech, which is addressed not to a court but to a general Athenian audience. These reasons
244 Athens and Corinth. Chap. XI
quite disprove the view that the scene described in w. 19-34 was a trial. But the idea that the assembly of Athenians went up to the hill-top as a suitable place for listening to an address is even more unsatisfactory. The top of the little hill is a most unsuitable place from its small size and its exposed position ; and it is quite out of keeping with the habits of the people to go to such a place for such a purpose. Curtius has led the way to a proper view of the whole incident, which lies wholly in the agora.