16. Was stirred (vapwévvero). Better, as Rev., was pro- voked. See on the kindred word contention (mapoEvopos), ch. xv. 39.
Saw (Jewpotvrs). Better, Pleas See on Luke x. 18.
Wholly given to idolatry (kateidwAov). Incorrect. The word, which occurs only here in the New Testament, and no- where in classical Greek, means full of idols. It applies to the city, not to the inhabitants. “We learn from Pliny that at
Cu. XVIL] THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 589
the time of Nero, Athens contained over three thousand public statues, besides a countless number of lesser images within the walls of private houses. Of this number the great majority were statues of gods, demi-gods, or heroes. In one street there stood before every house a square pillar carrying upon it a bust of the god Hermes. Another street, named the Street of the Tripods, was lined with tripods, dedicated by winners in the Greek national games, and carrying each one an inscription to a deity. Every gateway and porch carried its protecting god. Every street, every square, nay, every purlieu, had its sanctu- aries, and a Roman poet bitterly remarked that it was easier in Athens to find gods than men” (G. 8. Davies, “St. Paul in Greece”).
18. Epicureans. Disciples of Epicurus, and atheists. They acknowledged God in words, but denied his providence and superintendence over the world. According to them, the soul was material and annihilated at death. Pleasure was their chief good; and whatever higher sense their founder might have attached to this doctrine, his followers, in the apostle’s day, were given to gross sensualism.
Stoics. Pantheists. God was the soul of the world, or the world was God. Everything was governed by fate, to which God himself was subject. They denied the universal and perpetual immortality of the soul ; some supposing that it was swallowed up in deity; others, that it survived only till the final conflagration ; others, that immortality was restricted to the wise and good. Virtue was its own reward, and vice its own punishment. Pleasure was no good, and pain no evil. The name Stoic was derived from stoa, a porch. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, held his school in the Stoa Peeile, or painted portico, so called because adorned with pictures by the best masters.
Babbler (c7epuordyos). Lit., seed-picker: a bird which picks up seeds in the streets and markets ; hence one who picks
540 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu XVII.
up and retails scraps of news. Trench (“ Authorized Version of the New Testament ”) cites a parallel from Shakespeare :
‘¢ This fellow picks up wit as pigeons peas, And utters it again when Jove doth please. He is wit’s pedler, and retails his wares At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs.” Love's Labor’s Lost, v., 2.
Setter-forth (catayyededs). See on declare, ver. 23. Com- pare 1 Pet. iv. 4, 12.
Strange. Foreign.
19. Areopagus. The Hill of Mars: the seat of the ancient and venerable Athenian court which decided the most solemn questions connected with religion. Socrates was arraigned and condemned here on the charge of innovating on the state relig- ion. It received its name from the legend of the trial of Mars for the murder of the son of Neptune. The judges sat in the open air upon seats hewn out in the rock, on a platform ascended by a flight of stone steps immediately from the market-place. A temple of Mars was on the brow of the edifice, and the sanctu- ary of the Furies was in a broken cleft of the rock immediately below the judges’ seats. The Acropolis rose above it, with the Parthenon and the colossal statue of Athene. ‘“ It was a scene with which the dread recollections of centuries were associated. Those who withdrew to the Areopagus from the Agora, came, as it were, into the presence of a higher power. No place in Athens was so suitable for a discourse upon the mysteries of religion” (Conybeare and Howson).*