borders. Gradually they mingled more freely than at first with the Phrygian population, adopted their religion, though they retained their own language, and dwelt among them as a dominant race, so that Northern Galatia became the home of a settled people.
But a century later the Mithridatic wars swept to and fro across their country, obliterating the old landmarks and opening a new chapter in Galatian history. Many of their chieftains distinguished themselves on the Roman side, and were rewarded with large grants of territory outside the old borders: one in particular, Deiotarus, became by the favour of Pompey the most powerful monarch in Asia Minor. He and his successors were enabled by the active part which they took in the ensuing civil wars of Rome, or by judicious desertion of the losing cause, to enlarge and consolidate their kingdom until it embraced Southern Phrygia with parts of Lycaonia and Pisidia, and extended to the range of Taurus. This was the kingdom which the last native ruler Amyntas bequeathed to the Romans at his death in Β.ο, 25. A Roman province was formed out of it, and retained the name Galatia which had belonged to it under its Galatian king. There is nothing in this history of gradual expansion to justify the arbitrary restriction of the name to the northern division alone.
Still less reasonable does this appear in the light of its subsequent history. For seventy-five years before this Epistle was written Galatia had formed a single province of the Empire. Now the unity of an imperial province was not merely official, but affected all the relations of life. A system of centralised despotism prevailed under the Czesars which concentrated all authority—=military, civil, judicial alike—in the hands of the governor; commercial and financial matters were regulated by him; his court was the centre of social life. The name Galatia therefore in the N.T. can only mean the great central province of Asia Minor which bore that name.
But in the middle of the first century there was a wide difference in language, occupation, nationality, social organisation, between the northern and southern portions of the province. The northern was still mainly Keltic and pastoral with comparatively little com- merce and few roads. Southern Galatia, on the contrary, was full of flourishing cities, and enriched by the constant flow of commerce across it. This was the natural result of its geographical position and political history. In ancient times it formed the highway along which the Asiatic monarchs of the interior maintained their com- munication with the western coast. When Greek monarchs ruled in Syria and Asia Minor, the high-road between their two capitals