occasion, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, the " disciples," as they are termed, or the converts to Christianity, were first termed Christians, a few years after our Saviour's ascension-a distinction which has since continued, and will ever continue in the world. St John Chrysostom specifies this fact as the distinguishing prerogative of Antioch above all other cities in the world, and he has celebrated it in a most eloquent and glowing homily on the eleventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Antioch was the birth-place of St Luke the Evangelist. St Paul and St Barnabas remained in it a considerable time preaching the gospel, in their famous missionary expedition throughout the Gentile or Pagan cities. St Paul was baptized in the river Orontes, or Ahssy, which waters it; and to this day a gate of the modern city, in the north-eastern quarter leading to Aleppo, is invariably called Bal Boulous, or the Gate of St Paul. St Ignatius, the disciple and friend of St John the Apostle, and who died a martyr for the Christian cause, was, if not its first, among its first bishops. Here, too, at the end of the fourth century of the Christian era, the illustrious St John Chrysostom, its bishop, flourished, and preached with the same applause and success which he has gained from posterity for his eloquence and his learning. Antioch continued for centuries the seat of the chief patriarch of Asia. The Jews were extremely partial to Antioch. They had great privileges bestowed on them by Seleucus Nicanor, which Josephus informs us they possessed in his time. Vespasian, Titus, and other Roman Emperors, granted new honours and privileges to Antioch, after Syria was conquered by the Romans. Yet this city, notwithstanding its advantages both of wealth and situation, was often in danger of being overwhelmed by earthquakes, and ruined by enemies. About one hundred and forty-four years before the Christian era, the tyranny of Demetrius, king of Syria, caused the inhabitants of Antioch to revolt, and that prince sought

the assistance of Jonathan, one of the Maccabees, to check the rebellion, on which occasion the Jews were successful, killing, it is said, nearly ten thousand of the inhabitants, and setting fire to various parts of the city. In the year 115, it was almost utterly ruined by an earthquake, one of the most dreadful and appalling recorded in history, during the reign of the Emperor Trajan. The Emperor happened to be then in the city, and he escaped with great difficulty through a window of the room into which he had retired, after receiving considerable bruises; he contributed liberally towards its restoration. In A.D. 155, it was considerably injured by a de-. structive fire, but it was renovated at the expense of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. At the decline of the Roman empire, when Syria was overrun by Sapor, king of Persia, it was surprised by that monarch, while the inhabitants were engaged in the amusements of the theatre, its buildings pillaged and destroyed, and many of the citizens were massacred by the conqueror. In A. D. 331, under the reign of Constantine the Great, it was visited with a severe famine, which was alleviated by that emperor, who sent 30,000 bushels of corn to the citizens. During the reigns of Julian and Theodosius the Great, it suffered much from the same cause, aggravated in the latter reign by being accompanied with a severe plague. In the years 458 and 526, Antioch was again shaken by earthquakes; and in 540, when Chosroes I., king of Persia, invaded Syria, it was taken by storm, the citizens, who refused to capitulate, were either put to the sword, or carried off as slaves into Persia, and the city itself was consigned to the flames. It nevertheless recovered its splendour, until 587, when it was revisited with a dreadful earthquake, and almost entirely destroyed, thirty thousand persons losing their lives. It was rebuilt, and in 637 taken by the Saracens. In 966, Nicephoras Phocas retook it from the Saracens, by whom it had been strongly fortified. The Cru

saders captured Antioch in 1098, but it was afterwards taken and demolished by Bibaris, sultan of Egypt, in 1263. After that event its splendour terminated, and it has since been under the dominion of the Turks.

The city of Antioch, or Antakia, is described by travellers as now a poor place, exhibiting a mere wreck of its former greatness. Volney represents, it, "so anciently renowned for the luxury of its inhabitants, as little better than a ruinous town, whose houses, built with mud and straw, and narrow and miry streets, exhibit every appearance of misery and wretchedness." It is situated on the southern bank of the Orontes, at the foot of a steep and bare hill, upon the slope of which is a wall built by the Crusaders, in a valley of considerable fertility and cultivation. It is thirty miles south of Scanderoon, forty south-west of Aleppo, in east long. 35° 45', and north lat. 35° 17'. The Orontes, or Ahssy, or El-Aasi, as the Arabs call it, on account of the swiftness of its stream, winds through this valley, crossed by an old decayed bridge of four arches, where it is from 100 to 150 feet wide, and flows at the rate of three miles an hour. It might be made navigable, if the channel was cleared below the city in its progress towards the Mediterranean. Seven leagues above the city, the river passes through a lake abounding in fish, and especially in eels, many of which are salted every year, and serve as food during the Lent of the Greek Christians. "The town," says Mr Buckingham, "though inferior only to Aleppo, Damascus, and Hamat, in size, and consequently larger than any of those on the coast, is not so well built as these generally are, and has no large public buildings of any beauty. The houses are mostly constructed of stone, and are all pent-roofed and covered with red tiles; many of them are three storeys high, but more generally two, and the upper part is then constructed of wood. The streets are narrow, having a high raised causeway of flat pavement upon

each side for foot passengers, and a very narrow and deep passage between them for horses, seldom wide enough to admit of two passing each other. The bazaars are mostly open, and resemble those of the country generally. They are unusually numerous, however, in proportion to the size of the town, as this is a mart of supply for an extensive tract of country around it. All the articles in demand are here found in abundance, and the manufactures of the town itself consist of coarse pottery, cotton, cloth, and some silk twist, several tanneries and saddlery, for which last article, particularly bridles, martingales, &c. of fancy work in leather, the workmen of Antakia are celebrated. The population is thought to exceed 10,000, among which there are counted about one hundred and fifty Christian families, and twenty Jewish. The language of the people is Turkish, the Mahometans speaking no other; and only the Christians understanding Arabic, from their connection with the country to the southward in their commercial transactions. The Mahometans have fourteen mosques, six of which are ornamented with tall and slender white minarets, round close galleries, and blue pointed tops, surmounted by the Crescent, in the purely Turkish taste; six others have lower and thicker minarets of octangular shafts, with open galleries, and a sort of flat dome or umbrella top in the Syro-Arabian style; and two are merely small venerated tombs used as places of prayer. There are two khans, and several fountains, all of them of a very ordinary kind. We noticed one of the last called Ain-el-Omra, or The Fountain of Life, between the stones of which were driven in some hundreds of nails. The water is indeed excellent, and being esteemed as possessing several medicinal virtues, the afflicted who drink it drive in a nail near the spot, either as a propitiatory offering, or as a token of gratitude after recovery to the supposed genius of the stream. There is a cavern, too, within the town, which is celebrated for bestowing fecundity on

barren women, as well as opening the springs of life to the infant in the breasts of mothers before destitute of milk; but, for the obtaining of these blessings, certain rites are necessary to be performed, and women only are admitted to them. Both of these would seem to be vestiges of ancient superstitions, now difficult to be traced to their original source." The Christians have hitherto been prevented from erecting a church, although they are reputed wealthy, and have received various firmans from Constantinople for the purpose. Mr Buckingham, who made inquiries on the spot, says, that "the fanaticism of the Turks, and some unfortunate fatality which the Christians themselves think attached to the town, have hitherto always obstructed its execution." It is singular that in a city where in ancient times there were many thousands of Christian converts, there should be no more than one hundred and fifty Christian families; that in the very city where the name Christian was first given to the disciples of our Saviour, there is no Christian edifice for public worship. The Christians meet in a cave east of the town for the performance of divine service on Sundays and other holidays. The Jews, who were also numerous, now assemble in a small room in the house of their chief, and are unmolested in their peculiar observances. The government of the town is subject to Aleppo, and the Moteséllem, or governor, has only from fifty to sixty personal guards. "The men," says the writer from whom we have quoted, "dress mostly in the Turkish manner, with large cloth kaooks, long robes, red shalloon trowsers, and yellow boots and slippers. The women wear upper cloths of white muslin, and veil their faces with a stiff black gauze, also in the Turkish style. The fashion of their boots is to have them as small and tight round the foot and ancle as possible, while the upper part swells out suddenly to a size large enough to admit the thigh, and loosely overhangs the lower part; they are made invariably of yellow leather, reach to about the begin

ning of the calf of the leg, and are bound with blue raised in front, and finished there with a blue silk tassel, resembling very much, in general form, the wide mock Hessian boots formed in the loose overhauls of some of our dragoon regiments.-The view of the town and valley from the towers above is highly picturesque and interesting. The northern portion within the ancient walls is now filled with one extensive wood of gardens, chiefly olive, mulberry, and figtrees, and along the winding banks of the river, tall and slender poplars are seen; but the groves of Daphnis, once so famous here, are not now to be recognized among them. The amusements of all classes are also as purely Turkish as their dress and language; for instead of the more retired and solitary pleasures of the Arab, either in the corner of the coffee-room or in his own divan, the people repair to the banks of the Ahssy, which flows immediately before their town, and there enjoy upon its banks the united gratifications of wood and water, shade and verdure, the freshness of the summer breeze, and a cool and healthy air."

ANTIOCH OF PISIDIA, at present ANTIOCHIO, a city of Asia-Minor, anciently the capital of the province of Pisidia, was a Roman colony, and was also originally built by Seleucus in honour of his father, Antiochus the Great. There was a synagogue of the Jews in this town. St Paul and St Barnabas, in their journey from Perga, visited it, and St Paul preached an eloquent discourse in their synagogue, which the Gentiles who heard it wished him to deliver on the ensuing Sabbath. This request irritated the Jews, who perceived that some of the citizens were inclined to embrace Christianity, and they raised seditious reports against St Paul and his companion, by which they were compelled to leave the city, Acts xiii. 14, 15, &c. Mr Arundel places this city, once the capital of Pisidia, near Isbarte, a town to the west of the sites of Laodicea and Colosse. "Antioch of Pisidia," observes

that writer, in his Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia, "was the capital of Pisidia; Isbarte is the chief residence of Hamid. Antioch was the metropolitan see of Pisidia, and is so named in the Notitia. Isbarte is or ought to be the residence of the bishop of Pisidia, though at present he lives in Lysia." The chief men of this city persecuted and expelled the apostles, who "shook off the dust of their feet against them." In a signal manner has their rejection of the gospel been visited; their city has been destroyed, and even the site of it has nearly disappeared. See CESAREA.

There were other cities called Antioch. According to Dr Wells, there were in all sixteen cities of that name, but the two just noticed are only mentioned in the sacred writings.

ANTIPATRIS, on behalf of the father, a town of Palestine in Samaria, anciently called, according to Josephus, Caphir-Saba, or Capharsalama, and lay within the territory belonging to the half-tribe of Manasseh. It was a place of little repute, till it was rebuilt and enlarged by Herod the Great, and called Antipatris, in honour of his father Antipater. It was situated in a beautiful plain or valley, termed the Valley of Capharzaba, with a river and groves surrounding it, in the way from Jerusalem to Cæsarea, about seventeen miles from Joppa, forty-two from Jerusalem, and twenty-six from Cæsarea. St Paul halted in Antipatris in his journey from Jerusalem to the Roman governor at Cæsarea, when he was brought down under an escort of four hundred soldiers and seventy horsemen, to protect him from the conspiracy which was formed by the Jews to kill him by the way, Acts xxiii. 31, 32. The city existed in the eighth century, in a very dilapidated state. Its site is generally admitted to be that on which a miserable village called El Mukhalid now stands, consisting of about fifteen dwellings constructed in the form of Egyptian huts. In some maps, however, a town named Rastaken is marked on or near the site of this city. Anti

patris, during the Roman times, appears, from the facts mentioned by Josephus, to have been a place of considerable military importance. Alexander Jannius, one of the kings of Judea, in order to oppose Antiochus Dionysius, cut deep trenches between Antipatris and the shores of Joppa; he also erected a high wall before the trenches, and built wooden towers to give alarm at any sudden approach. No traces of these trenches, or the wall, now remain, they having been filled up and destroyed by Antiochus. "The Roman general Cestrus," says Josephus, "after marching from Ptolemais (Acre) to Cæsarea, is said to have removed with his whole army from thence, and marched to Antipatris, on his way to Jerusalem. When he was informed that there was a great body of Jewish forces gotten together in a certain tower called Aphek, he sent a party before to fight them. This party dispersed the Jews, by affrighting them without engaging; so they came, and finding their camp deserted, they burnt it, as well as the villages which lay about it." A portion of a fortified building still exists, which is rightly conjectured to be the remains of the tower of Aphek. Vespasian, while engaged in prosecuting the Jewish war, halted at Antipatris two days, before he resumed his career of desolation by burning, destroying, and laying waste the cities and villages in his way. This city is supposed to have been the same with Capharsalama, mentioned in the First Book of the Maccabees, where a battle was fought, in the reign of Demetrius, between Nicanor, a man who was an implacable enemy of the Jews, and Judas Maccabæus, when five thousand of Nicanor's army were slain, and the rest saved themselves by flight, 1 Macc. vii. 26, 32.

ANTONIA, a strong tower or fortress of Jerusalem, which stood on the west and north angle of the Temple, so named by Herod the Great in honour of his illustrious friend Mark Antony. It stood upon an eminence cut steep on all sides, and enclosed by a wall three hundred cubits high. It was built in the form of an immense

square tower, surmounted by little towers on each corner. From its great height, it commanded a fine view of the Temple, to which it had a communication by a covered passage, and served as a kind of citadel to the Temple, in the same manner as the Temple was in some respects a citadel to the town. The Romans always kept a large garrison in the tower of Antonia. It was from this tower the tribune ran with some soldiers to rescue St Paul from the violence of the Jews, who had seized him in the Temple, and intended to kill him, Acts xxi. 31, 32. Antonia was originally built by Hyrcanus, and was named Baris, before it was enlarged and fortified by Herod. It was taken by Titus at the memorable siege of Jerusalem, who thus became master of the Temple and the city. See JERUSALEM.

APHARSACHITES, or APHARSATHCHITES, a people sent by the kings of Assyria to inhabit the country of Samaria, in the room of those Israelites who had been removed beyond the Euphrates. They greatly opposed the rebuilding of Jerusalem, Ezra iv. 9; v. 6.

APHEK, a stream, or rapid torrent, or strength, vigour, the name of various cities mentioned by the sacred historians. 1. APHEK, a city or town belonging to the tribe of Asher, near Sidon, in which, however, the Canaanites were permitted to remain, Josh. xiii. 4; xix. 30; Judg.i. 31.-2. APHEK, belonging to the tribe of Judah, supposed to be the same as APHEKA, mentioned in the Book of Joshua (xv. 53), where the Philistines encamped against the Israelites when the ark was taken in battle, 1 Sam. iv. 1.-3. APHEK, situated in the Valley of Jezreel, where King Saul fell, 1 Sam. xxix. 3.-4. APHEK, situated between Heliopolis and Biblos, the chief city of Benhadad, king of Syria, where the Syrians were worsted, and where twenty-seven thousand of them, retiring in precipitation, were killed by the falling of the walls, 1 Kings xx. 26, 30. After their defeat on the plains of Aphek by the Israelites, the Syrians entered the city, despairing of quarter, and keenly

pursued by the victors. It appears that the Israelites completely demolished the place. It is probably the same as the city APHACA near Lebanon, mentioned by Paul Lucas, which was swallowed up in a lake of Mount Libanus, about nine miles in circumference, and several houses are alleged to be seen still entire under water. The soil of the neighbourhood is said to be extremely bituminous, which has caused some to assert that subterraneous fires consumed the solid substance of the earth where the city stood, till it sunk, and formed a lake.

APHERA, or APHARA, a town belonging to the tribe of Benjamin.

APHES-DAMMIM, or EPHES-DAMMIM, the portion or effusion of blood, or drop of blood, sometimes called PHESDOMMIM, the name of a place in the territory of the tribe of Judah. EPHES-DAMMIM.

See

APHRAH, called the House of Aphrah, the name of a place in or near Jerusalem, Micah i. 10.

APOLLONIA, perdition, destruction, a city so called in the ancient district of Chalcedica or Chalcis, in Macedonia, now known by the name of ERISSO and POLINA, situated to the southward of Amphipolis. It received its name from the heathen deity Apollo, to whom a splendid temple was erected. Nothing remarkable is recorded respecting this city by the sacred historians, and we only find it mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as a place through which St Paul passed on his way to Thessalonica, Acts xvii. 1. It is at present called ERISSO. There were various cities of this name in ancient times, besides the one mentioned by the evangelical writer, especially one in Judea, between Cæsarea and Joppa, placed by M. D'Anville to the northward of Antipatris, on the site of which the modern village of Arsuf now stands; and another, situated between Babylon and Suza, in the ancient kingdom of Assyria. The classical geographers enumerate other seventeen towns, besides an island in the vicinity of Lycia, of this name, situated