Introductory
“We, at Athen3, are lovers of the beautiful.” — Pencles.
“That city which was the envy and wonder of the — Demades.
“There still survive to her everlasting possessions. On the one hand the memory of her exploits: on the other the splendour of the monuments consecrated in former days.” — Demosthenes.
“Rome ranks as the third: Athens and Jerusalem as the other two. The three people of God’s election: two for things temporal and one for things eternal.” — Dr. Arnold.
We had recently been on the track of other Biblical scenes and memories. A few days before, while sailing among the Isles of the Archipelago, a distant view of Patmos was obtained, with its serrated outlines and undying associations. An appropriate sequel to this was a visit to the ruins of Ephesus, identified with the labours and sojournings of more than one Apostle; — perhaps its predominating remembrance that of being the home, in later years, of the Beloved Disciple; his grave most probably somewhere among the thickets of Mount Prion. Now we were approaching a city which, in its one New Testament allusion, belongs exclusively to St. Paul. His route hither from the north had been along the coast of the Island of Eubcea, doubling Cape Colonna — the historic promontory of Sunium — ‘’ Sunium’s marble steep,” at the entrance to the Saronic Gulph. Sunium, which had long been familiarised by the drawings of Turner and the Grecian Williams, was, in our case, passed in the dark; but an opportunity was given on the return voyage of seeing the remarkable eminence, crowned with the twelve Doric columns in picturesque ruin, of the Temple of Minerva, in front of which Plato, with a glorious prospect before him, was wont to discourse to his disciples on the mysteries of mind and matter. It is truly a befitting outpost to these classic shores — the “Beautiful Gate” of the Attic Temple. In its original perfection, it must have been an object, alike for guidance and welcome, as dear to the Greek mariner, as the first sight of the southern cliffs of England are to our own.^
That morning hour cannot soon be forgotten, when, after skirting the southern slopes of Hymettus, which for some distance had intercepted the inland view on our right, the unmistakable grey Acropolis presented itself on its bold rock, at a distance of seven or eight miles. It was as impressive as ever, with all the hoar of antiquity around it; lacking chiefly what, while Athens was in her glory, must have formed to all voyagers a prominent feature, and one which, lingering on to St. Paul’s time, could not fail to arrest him and his companions — the colossal statue of Minerva Promachus, “The Minerva of bronze,”
* The pillars of the temple give the Cape its modern name, “Colonna.”
as it was termed; tutelary goddess of the city, keeping watch and ward over the priceless treasures at her side.^ The Island of Salamis was in front.
Forgetting for a moment the havoc which intervening ages have wrought, let us at once transport ourselves in imagination, eighteen centuries ago, and follow the footsteps of the Great Apostle. “As we near the entrance,” is a graphic description of his arrival in the harbour, “the land rises and conceals all the plain. Idlers come down upon the rocks to watch the coming vessel. The sailors are all on the alert. Suddenly an opening is revealed; and a sharp turn of the helm brings the ship in between two moles, on which towers are erected. We are in smooth water, and anchor is cast in seven fathoms in the basin of the Pirseus.” We cannot be far wrong in supposing that it was some time in early autumn, when, passing through this, its seaward gate, St. Paul made his way to the city of Pericles and Themistocles, Socrates and Plato. Athens, it
Promachus (irpSyttaxos). Her spear and helmet were made from the brazen shields taken at the battle of Marathon; and though thirty-five miles distant, the point of the spear and crest of the helmet were said ta be visible in rounding the Cape. The statue of the reputed goddess survived Paul’s visit more than three centuries, as in A.D. 395 “it was said to have scared away Alaric when he came to sack the Acropolis.” — See Dr. Smith’s “History of Greece,” p. 396.
2 Howson and Conybeare’s “Life and Epistles of St. Paul,” vol. i. p. 374.
must be remembered, was not in his day the Athens of these great men. She was in her prime and glory five hundred years before; “a distance of time,” as a writer observes, “as wide as that which separates us from the Plantagenets.” Her glory had culminated, alike politically, and intellectually. She had been superseded by Corinth as the true capital of the province and seat of the government. Two centuries had placed her under the iron foot of imperial ubiquitous Rome. The latter, however, was too magnanimous to forget the debt she and her subject kingdoms owed to the “Mother of Arts and Eloquence.” To a considerable extent she safeguarded and conserved the walls, temples, and other public buildings, of her illustrious rival: although not a few statues were deemed a fair subject of spoliation and pillage, for the adornment of the Capitol, Forum, and the Palaces of the Palatine. The Eagles of the Empire, as is well known, were unscrupulous as to where they winged their flight and planted their talons. But, while the Caesars would tolerate no competitor in arms, they ungrudgingly conceded to Athens superiority in other realms. Augustus made her a free city of the Empire in the province of Achaia, allowing her to retain her independence, and recognising her as the great ‘’Artshop” of the world. Although therefore fallen from her pristine splendour, and in other ways deteriorating and deteriorated, we must not think of the chief city of the Hellenes, on the occasion of Paul’s visit, as having abnegated all that had -made her for centuries distinguished. Her golden age had passed, but her silver one remained. She was more than the mere effete and passive trustee of art-treasures.^ Even her philosophic schools, of which we shall hereafter speak, still lingered, and indeed survived for some centuries later. “The physical might of Rome,” it has been well said, “had subdued Greece; but the mind of Greece had mastered Rome. The Greeks became the teachers of their conquerors. The deities of Greece were incorporated into the national faith of Rome. Greek literature became the education of the Roman youth. Greek philosophy was almost the only philosophy the Roman knew. Rome adopted Grecian arts, and was insensibly moulded by contact with Grecian life. So that the world in name and government was Roman, but in feeling and civilisation Greek.”
1 In an article in our leading journal on the most recent valuable discovery of statues in the Acropolis, the writer — evidently an authority on art — mentions, that in the first century, corresponding with St. Paul’s visit, “the technical skill of the Attic sculptors was hardly less than in its prime.” — The Times, Feb. 25, 1886.
- r. W. Robertson’s Sermons. First Series, p. 199.
The long walls of Themistocles, extending in double line 550 feet apart, erected centuries before, covered a distance of five miles, from the sea to the city. A singular mural avenue this must have been, altogether occupying a place of its own, among the world’s capitals. In relation to Athens these walls are likened, by one of the old Greek writers, to a ship with two cables. ‘’ Motley and rough -hewn and uncouthly piled, they recalled, age after age, to the traveller, the name of the ablest statesman and the most heroic days of Athens. There, at frequent intervals, would he survey stones wrought in the rude fashion of former times; ornaments borrowed from the antique edifices demolished by the Mede; and frieze and column plucked from dismantled sepulchres; so that even the dead contributed from their tombs to the defence of Athens.” This ‘Appian Way,’ with its side buttresses sixty feet high, had been strengthened all the distance with towers of defence, while here and there, from the Piraeus, statues and temples broke the monotony of the line. In St. Paul’s time all must have been very dilapidated; in our own hardly traceable.
It is just possible the Apostle may have landed at Phalerum, which was a nearer port to the city, but not the most used; though enjoying also a natural harbour and surrounded with temples and statues.
^” Lord’s Lytton’s “Athens,” p. 380.
The Apostle’s companions from Berea after seeing their honoured charge safely lodged in the city, appear to have taken their departure; probably availing themselves of the return of the coasting vessel to their own northern home. We have this touching entry in one of St. Paul’s subsequent letters: “We were left at Athens alone” (1 Thess. iii. 1). It was the first time since his missionary labours began that he could make such an assertion. Some dim conjecture may be formed of what his feelings were, when, in this isolation, a solitary stranger, he paced the streets of the Greek Metropolis. He had no Aquila and Priscilla now, as subsequently at Ephesus, not only to cheer him with their Christian converse, but to relieve and beguile the vacant hours by manual occupation. His experience must have resembled that of a far less noble human agent, who, 900 years before, passed, on a similar lonely unbefriended mission, through the streets of Nineveh (Jonah iii. 4). We know from more than one incident in the Apostle’s life, how dependent he was on sympathy; how tenderly he clung to cherished fellowships, and felt the blank of familiar faces and voices. How he valued the refreshing intercourse with Onesiphorus, and followed him with grateful prayers and benedictions! How the spirits lo ST. PAUL IN ATHEaWS.
of the jaded prisoner revived at the unexpected welcome accorded him by Roman brethren at Appii Forum and “the Three Taverns!” Who can fail to recall the clinging affection which bound him to his own son in the faith! How the very anticipation of Timothy’s coming seemed to erase the furrows from his brow! How his presence made him forget the gloom and the chains of the Mamertine!
Independently altogether of his alleged weakness of sight,^ we have every reason to infer, that St. Paul’s was not by any means what might be called an “aesthetic nature,” and therefore he was innocent even of an average appreciation of Hellenic or other art. There are touches, indeed, here and there in his Epistles and in his journeyings, which we may afterwards more especially note, where we can discern that he was far from insensible to the loveliness of that creation he elsewhere speaks of as being unwillingly “made subject to vanity” (Rom. viii. 20). Yet, “the things
I have endeavoured to condense the opinions on this still-debated subject in “The Footsteps of St. Paul,” pp. 168-171, and only advert to it here in passing. It would seem, from the fact of being “left alone at Athens,” and yet evidently not only visiting its places of public resort, but noting the objects around, that the Apostle’s sight was not permanently injured. The complaint was not chronic. He might be possibly subject to temporary attacks of ophthalmia, or, it might bC; of impaired vision, from which, at other times, as on the present occasion, he was comparatively free.
INTRODUCTORY. ii
that are seen “occupied a very subordinate place in comparison with higher affinities and claims. St. John, who came afterwards to describe the glories of the New Jerusalem and its temple visions, would probably have been more at home than he, in the city of Phidias and Praxiteles, although even to him, in another respect, there would be much uncongenial. An Israelite so long familiar with another “Acropolis” which crowned the summit of Mount Moriah, could have viewed that throng of statues and idols with little else than shock or repulsion. The Jew, as we know, was forbidden the use of graven images. With the sole exception of the two- winged cherubim in the most Holy Place, screened from the common gaze, there was not so ranch as one statue in the Temple and its courts, or amid the streets of Zion. It was the deepest insult which a Roman conqueror could inflict, when, in sacrilegious contravention of a sacred scruple, he dared insist on setting up his own image on the Hill of God. How singular was the contrast in the city Paul was now visiting! In the oft-quoted words of the Roman satirist Petronius, “It was in Athens, easier to find a god than a man.” We can readily believe that his succession of solitary walks through its streets and arcades would leave no other impression on his mind but that of bewilderment. Very similar probably to what would be the case with a Christian peasant from Caithness or Cornwall — who “knows, and knows no more, his Bible true” — when nshered for the first time, alone, into the halls of our British Museum, with its tiers and colonnades of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Roman sculptures. Our Apostle would remember all he saw, only as an unintelligible jumble of sights and objects that had little congeniality with his tastes, and still less with his antecedents. He would be glad when he could, to escape to the free air on the slopes of Hymettus, or the olive woods which bordered the Ilyssus.^
As already stated, in the Preface to this Volume, Pausanias, an intelligent and observant traveller — an enthusiastic connoisseur in art, himself visited Athens half a century later, in the reign of the Antonines. He has left, in his narration, circumstantial details, which enable us vividly to realise the city of Minerva of the first and second century, and consequently as it appeared at the time of our Apostle’s visit. We do not, of course, for a moment entertain the idea, so unlikely, and indeed
We must be allowed, however, to demur to what is regarded as a justifiable inference by some writers, that St. Paul was devoid of ‘culture.’ The schools of his native Tarsus supplied him with much more than Rabbinical learning. Nor have we any reason to believe that his farther educatioa “at the feet of Gamaliel” was of a narrow and exclusive character.
preposterous, that St. Paul either noted, or cared to note, the succession of objects circumstantially described, and which proved so interesting to this later traveller, with tastes and proclivities very different. It is enough for us, that the cursory inspection and impression, prepared him for the Sermon on Mars’ Hill, subsequently to be considered. Its power and beauty, however, and what may be called intrinsic interest, will be all the better appreciated and understood, by making ourselves somewhat minutely familiar with its framework; including some of those very Temples and Statues which formed the text for the Apostle’s burning words.
“All along the way,” to quote from the Itinerary of our Lydian traveller, as he follows the high road from the Piraeus, “are seen the tombs of the most noted men, such as Menander, the son of Diopethes, and the empty sepulchre of Euripides “(i. p. 4). ...” On entering into the city, there is an edifice raised for the sake of those processions which take place sometimes once a year, and at others in un-
For reasons already stated, I have only availed myself in a partial way of these painstaking descriptions of Pausanias. The Itinerary embraced other countries besides Greece, and is in ten books. The work of “the Syrian Sophist,” as Galen calls him, while thoroughly reliable, is written in an intricate style, and much too diffuse and prolix. But, as one of his translators remarks,” It will doubtless be ever considered as an invaluable treasure of Greek and Roman antiquities.”
ceiiain periods of time. Near to this is the Temple of Ceres, in which the statue of the goddess herself, of her daughter Proserpine, and of lacchus (Bacchus) holding a torch, are contained. Moreover, it is signified on the Wall, in Attic letters, that all these are the works of Praxiteles. Not far from this temple is the statue of Neptune hurling his spear at the giant Polybotes “(Pans., vol. i. chap, ii.) He proceeds minutely to describe a series of Porches reaching from the Gates to the Ceramicus, adorned with ‘* brazen images” of those who have rendered themselves illustrious. Passing statues of Minerva and Apollo, Mercury and the Muses, on his left rose the Pynx, the place of public assembly, “with its hema cut from the solid rock, guarded by a statue of Jupiter and the Nymphs of the Demus.” The rough stone pedestal {pulpitum) survives to this day the ravages of time, and seems still to echo with the voices of
“Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratic.”
Pursuing the road under rows of plane trees planted by Cimon, he enumerates the statues of
“The Pynx included an area of more than 12,000 yards, and could with ease contain the entire free civic population of Athens.” — Stuay’t’s Antiquities, p. 137 — a volume procured by the writer at Athens, and which formed a valuable and reliable guide. — Illustrated. Bohn, London.
Conon and his son Timotheus; of Epaminondas and other historical personages: for the evidences of ancient polytheism are intermingled with tributes to ancient heroes, orators, and philosophers. Bronze figures are backed with paintings of famous battles or sieges. Some sculptures are seen in alto and has relief; others, though more rarely (protected from weather and plunderers), are fashioned of ivory and inlaid with precious metals. With memories all its own, he mentions the statue of Demosthenes. Could Paul, as he traversed the same route, fail to be arrested by a name which, alike in the schools of his own city and in that of Gamaliel, could hardly fail to be familiar; a name identified then as now with the loftiest flights of oratory which, in the lines of Milton, just quoted, stirred the pulses of Greece in her palmiest days. Here was the massive form raised close to the spot which had listened to the living tones.^ Then follow other statues of sovereigns in the realms alike of action and thought. Miltiades and Themistocles, Philip of Macedon and his greater son; while in front of a conspicuous portico, on which, in glowing pigment, along with figures of deified heroes,
Lord Brougham pronounces the De Corona of Demosthenes “the greatest oration of the greatest of orators.”
was delineated the siege of Troy and the battle of Marathon, stood the figure of Solon. If we might farther venture to imagine our Apostle, in the course of his sojourn, straying into one of the adjacent temples, he would have seen what a Jew at least must have regarded with interested surprise, a bronze statue of his own country’s high priest, Hyrcanus.^
But we need not unnecessarily extend this roll and register of Athenian “art and man’s device.” Even the decoration of their private dwellings, which fell under the eye of our second century traveller, specially the Atrium or Court- Yard of their houses, bore testimony how deeply rooted image and idol-worship was. The casual gleanings we have given from him and his translators are sufficient to give force and pungency to the indictment of the Apostle: —” His spirit was
One possible or probable reason for this exceptional introduction by the Athenians of a Jewish statue, may have been the known sympathy which the old Hebrew ecclesiastic had for art and architecture. He lived 180 B.C. Though not belonging to the theme of the present Volume, the incidental remark may be forgiven, that one of the most interesting, and indeed wonderful of recent Palestine explorations, is the discovery of the magnificent palace of this same Hierarch at Arak-el-Einir on the other side of Jordan, more than a thousand feet above the Ghor, and surrounded with singularly beautiful and park-like scenery, “coombe and valley, and thickest English turf.” The account of this palace, with its carvings and monoliths, evidently not unworthy to be named with some of the buildings which crowned the Attic Acropolis, is graphically given in the “Bacchante Cruise” of the two English Princes, vol. ii. p. 639.
STIRRED IN Him when He saw the city full of
IDOLS.”
‘’Full of idols,’’ for so the original may be more literally and effectively rendered. The Greek word in our English version translated “stirred “lirapwvveTo~ is that from which our word ‘’ paroxysm” is taken. It therefore indicates violent emotion; that the spectator was excited — energised to indignation.^ What he beheld was a travestie of true religion — a parody on God. The second commandment of his decalogue could not fail to rise before him with protesting voice; and the image and accents of Another, “on the way to Damascus,” would deepen and intensify that reooil of spirit. “Yea, what indignation... yea, what revenge!” (2 Cor. vii. 11). It was, let it be fearlessly asserted, no antagonism to Art, as such; but it was Art prostituted and debased, that roused St. Paul’s feelings now from their depth. His own Pentateuch must have told him in his oft perusal of it, how the Jehovah of Israel had consecrated Art in the Desert of the Wandering, through
KaretSwXov. “We learn from Pliny that there still remained after Nero’s spoliation 3000 statues at Athens.” — Col. Leake, vol. i. p. 24.
2 In the R.V. it is rendered “provoked.” It is the same word that is used with regard to an unhappy memory (Acts xv. 39) describing the keenness of feeling (R.V. “sharp contention”) which separated the Apostle from his fellow-delegate Barnabas.
B the work of Aholiab and Bezaleel (Exod. xxxviii. 22). While the gorgeous pile of structures in his ancestral Temple in Jerusalem, with its porches and colonnades and roofs, its altars of brass and of gold, had arrested the eye of the Great Master Himself, and evoked from His lips a touching dirge of lamentation (Luke xix. 41-44). But the graving and embroidery — the “cunning work “of these artists of the Hebrew Tabernacle, whether in gold, silver and brass; or in blue, purple, scarlet and fine linen, and the later glories of Mount Zion, were very different in purpose and execution from those marble and bronze incarnations, many of which ministered as incentives to vile passion. They seemed to reflect a silent scorn on the Moral Code proclaimed amid the thunderings of Sinai; and which was enforced and intensified by Him, who came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it. The first chapter of Romans, the Apostle’s own subsequent deliberate verdict, reveals the too truthful, debasing picture; and vindicates the justice and vehemence of his present denunciation.” He saw,” in the remark of Lechler, “that all this majesty and beauty had placed itself between man and his Creator, and bound him faster to his gods which were no gods.” In a word, enough, and more than enough, was seen to convince him, that the city in which he now wandered, a downcast stranger, was alike by the tenet of the philosopher and the chisel of the sculptor, the home and haunt of what was displeasing to the Jehovah of his fathers, and dishonouring to his once crucified but now exalted and glorified Master.
But he remembers his great mission and vocation. He is there not to shed sentimental tears, or merely utter a silent protest within his own bosom. The cry from Europe to Asia, “Come over and help us,” still prolongs its echoes. Though only too conscious of his own weakness, and of the formidable nature of the conflict, he resolves, moral hero that he was, to do battle for God and His Christ.