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century) looked for protection and vengeance both to the civil courts and to the Divine power. Christian formulae have it that he who injures or violates the tomb "shall have to reckon with God," or "shall give account to God, who is to judge the living and the dead," etc. These formulae are developed out of pagan suggestions. It is characteristic of the Christian formulae to appeal more clearly and explicitly to the judgment day, as the time when the reckoning shall take place and the punishment be inflicted.

This is a somewhat meagre lesson to teach, and indicates a narrow and half-pagan view. The ordinary Phrygian Christian of the third century was still, in some respects, strongly tinged with the old pre-Christian ideas about the grave and its sanctity. Such ideas are always difficult to eliminate from the minds of a converted people. Perhaps it is neither wise nor right to try to eliminate them too rapidly. Certainly the Christian gravestones of the third century in central Asia Minor show generally this extremely jealous maintenance of the sole right to the use of the tomb (a jealousy which originated in the pagan idea that the tomb is the temple of the dead man, where he enjoys the worship and is ready to grant the prayers of his descendants who maintain his religious cult, and that any intruder would diminish his enjoyment by sharing in the worship). Yet there are traces that even during the third century the Phrygian Christians were advancing towards a more noble and Christian view, in which the tomb was open to friends or to the brethren generally.

2

In the unbroken monument, which has just been described, a book is roughly indicated by incised lines beside. the legend. In the EXPOSITOR, as above quoted, I sug1 These are described in Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, ii. pp. 496 ff., 514 ff.; but other pagan examples occur besides those there mentioned. 2 Cities and Bishoprics, ii. pp. 531 f., 732 f.

3 The Greek word ßßior, a book, is often used to indicate a document of the kind that was generally written on tabellæ.

gested that this was intended to represent an open codex of the Bible (which was possible at that period); but the fact that the legend and the book are added together by the same rude hand makes it natural to understand that they stand in a close relation to one another. If that be so, the book must rather be understood to be a record of the covenant or arrangement between God and man; and the book is opened to test the faithfulness with which the covenant has been kept. In fact the book is simply a symbol of the judgment of God which all men must submit to. The thought of the day of judgment was uppermost in those Phrygian epitaphs; and in one of them the formula is "he shall have to reckon with God both now and at the day of judgment." It is not so much a book in our sense of the word, as a set of tablets, of the kind on which letters, wills and many other documents of ordinary life or of legal character were inscribed.

1

The origin of the legend might throw light on the purpose; but I do not know whence it is derived. The words are not taken from the Septuagint (in which only ȧdikeîv év leg, not Tòv Oeóv, seems to occur, e.g. 2 Chron. xxvi. 16). They are, probably, to be understood as a summary statement of the covenant, which is supposed to be stated in the tabellæ. These tablets have been opened when the formal judgment of the case has begun, just as, in ordinary legal processes, the tablets containing the formal agreement on which the case turned were opened in court when the legal process began.

That this is the preferable interpretation seems to follow from a Christian tombstone, probably of the period 250–280 A.D., found at Isaura Nova about forty miles south of Iconium. This stone, one of the most important of the recently discovered Christian monuments of that country, 1 Cities and Bishoprics, ii. p. 514, no. 353. Compare also the two formulæ already quoted.

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repeated by permission of the Council of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.

This remarkable monument of a Lycaonian bishop is

is shown in the accompanying illustration, drawn by Miss A. Margaret Ramsay, and published by her in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1904, p. 265. The illustration is here

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the oldest as yet known in Asia Minor, in which a distinctively Christian character is imparted to the ornamentation the figures represented are chosen by Christian taste and are intended to produce a specially Christian effect. Yet there is nothing necessarily Christian either in the general scheme of the monument or about any one of the details. There is none of them that might not conceivably be used by a pagan, and most of them were freely used in pagan art of the period in question. The total effect, however, and the spirit of the whole, are indubitably Christian, and the monument affords extremely interesting evidence about the local religious feeling in the second half of the third century.

One part of the ornamentation alone is probably a Christian idea in origin, and not adapted from contemporary pagan art-the two fish. The fish is hardly known as an ornament in pagan art. Sacred fish indeed are well known in pagan religion, and it is quite probable that some esoteric meaning or power was there attributed to the fish; but the fish does not seem to have affected the popular art of contemporary society. Only in Christian thought and Christian symbolic expression was the fish of the highest importance, so as to make it a suitable device in a prominent place on an elaborate gravestone like this. The two fishes symmetrically indicated on this stone would alone be sufficient to suggest that it is a Christian monument.

The Christian character of the stone is demonstrated beyond question by the inscriptions. The principal inscription follows the usual pagan form, and yet differs subtly from it a lady whose name ends in the termination -illa (Nonilla or something similar) "did honour to the blessed Papas, the sweetest one and friend of all." Nonilla must have been closely connected with the deceased, as the term "sweetest" (yλUKÚTаTOS) is practically restricted on

the tombstones of the country to express near relationship.1 She was probably his wife, yet she does not mention the relationship nor the name of the deceased. She only calls him by the title, which already had become almost a technical term for a bishop among the Christians, μakápos πάπας.

The first explanation of this peculiarity which suggests itself is that the title Papas had already in this part of Asia Minor almost superseded the original name of the bishop the office, like many of the great pagan priesthoods, was hieronymos, i.e. the bearer disused his personal name, and took the hieratic official title in its place. A different explanation, however, will be advanced at the end of this paper as possible, founded on the theory that the bishop was a martyr.

His relatives here even seem to sink their relationship, and regard him only in his hieratic aspect. There is hardly another epitaph in this district in which the relative who erects the tomb fails to mention the relationship to the buried person. The rule which is observed in some gravestones of this same town, e.g. of another bishop, and some other Christian officials, presbyter, œconomissa, etc., whose name and title alone are inscribed on their tombs, is really a different sepulchral formula, in which the maker of the tomb is not mentioned.

If the view that the title is here substituted for the name of the deceased is correct, it would suggest that a strong pagan influence affected this local development of Christianity. In fact it might be asked whether the title Papas was not due to pagan influence. That title was applied in Asia Minor to the chief god; and it was also used as a title

1 . . . ιλλα ἐκόσμησεν τὸν μακάριον πάπαν, τὸν γλυκύτατον καὶ πάντων φίλον. The formula with exóoμŋoev was extremely common in Lycaonia: it is paraphrased in a metrical epitaph of Nova Isaura (Miss Ramsay, No. 1) as Teûže oi dyλainy, "wrought a beautiful monument for him." Ignatius spoke of the deacons of Magnesia as τῶν ἐμοὶ γλυκυτάτων.

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