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Bible Dictionaries
Phrygia
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Φρυγία)
Phrygia, the land of the Phryges, was the western part of the central plateau of Asia Minor. Its boundaries were vague and varying. At one time it extended from the aegean to the Halys, and from the mountains of Bithynia to the Taurus, but it was gradually contracted on every side. To the early Greeks Phrygia was the home of a heroic and conquering race, who have left in the country drained by the upper Sangarius many astonishing monuments of their greatness.
‘In Phrygia once were gallant armies known
In ancient time, when Otreus filled the throne,
When godlike Migdon led his troops of horse’
(Hom. Il. iii. 185 f.).
But to the later Greeks and the Romans Phrygia was politically unimportant, and the once illustrious names of Midas and Manes were given to Phrygian slaves. The Kimmerian inundation in the 7th cent. broke the spirit of the race, who sank into a state of peaceful indolence, disturbed only by fits of wild religious excitement. Their land became an easy prey to every spoiler, and in 278 b.c. the Gauls took possession of N.E. Phrygia, which was henceforth known as Galatia. Attalus 1. of Pergamos (241-197 b.c.) seized the territory in which lay the towns of Kotiaion and Dorylaion, and which was thereafter called ‘Acquired Phrygia’ (Phrygia Epictetus). In the S.E. was Iconium (q.v._), which the natives continued to regard as Phrygian. while Roman writers assigned it to Lycaonia. In the S. was Pisidian Phrygia (Ptol. v. v. 4) or Phrygia towards Pisidia (πρὸς Πισιδίᾳ [Strabo, xii. pp. 557, 566]), the most important town of which was called Antioch towards Pisidia; but as Pisidia gradually extended northwards this Antioch ceased to be Phrygian and was called Pisidian Antioch (q.v._). Only in the S.W. did the Phrygians show any sign of expansion. Hierapolis was apparently once Lydian, and Laodicea Carian; but in the Roman period all the cities of the Lycus Valley were regarded as Phrygian. ‘The Gate of Phrygia’ was below the junction of the Lycus and Maeander; Polemon of Laodicea was known as ‘the Phrygian’; and ‘Phrygian powder’ was a Laodicean preparation.
In the Roman provincial system of government Asia Minor was cut and carved with but little regard for old national and historical distinctions. While the eastern part of Phrygia (with Iconium) and the southern (with Pisidia) were attached to the province of Galatia, the western part, which was much the larger, was included in the province of Asia. The former was called Phrygia Galatica and the latter Phrygia Asiana.
Phrygia was traversed by the great route of traffic and intercourse which joined the aegean with Syria and the Euphrates. Along this line the early Seleucids planted a series of Greek cities for the defence of their Empire and the diffusion of Hellenic culture. Here the Greek language gradually displaced the Phrygian, which was ‘perhaps similar in character to the Armenian’ (T. Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, Eng. tr._, 1909, i. 328), but the latter continued to hold its ground in the rural districts down to the 3rd cent. of our era. A striking feature in the life of these cities was the presence of Jews in large numbers.
Their status is indicated by Josephus (Ant. XII. iii. 1). ‘The Jews also obtained honours from the kings of Asia, when they became their auxiliaries; for Seleucus Nicator made them citizens of those cities which he built in Asia … and gave them privileges equal to those of the Macedonians and Greeks, who were the inhabitants, insomuch that these privileges continue to this very day.’ Antiochus the Great (223-187 b.c.) ‘thought proper to remove 2000 families of Jews, with their effects, out of Mesopotamia and Babylon’ to Lydia and Phrygia (XII. iii. 4).
In these Hellenistic cities the Jews relaxed their strictness so much that the orthodox counted them degenerate. There is a bitter saying in the Talmud to the effect that the baths and wines of Phrygia had separated the ‘Ten Tribes’ from the brethren (A. Neubauer, La Géogr. du Talmud, 1868, p. 315). This very liberalism, however, probably made the reaction of the Jews on their environment all the greater, and St. Paul found in the cities of Phrygia numerous proselytes, whose minds proved the best soil for the seed of the evangel. The case of Timothy of Lystra, the son of a Greek father and a Jewish mother, uncircumcised and yet acquainted from his childhood with the Scriptures, was probably typical.
Phrygia was one of the first parts of Asia Minor to be generally Christianized. Not a few Christian monuments of the 2nd cent., and very many of the 3rd, have been found in the country. Eusebius (HE_ viii. 11) says that in the time of Diocletian there was a Phrygian city in which every single soul was Christian. The enthusiasm with which the pagan Phrygians were in the habit of throwing themselves into the worship of Cybele re-appeared in the Phrygian type of Christianity, which gave birth to Montanism with its spiritual ecstasies and prophetic visions.
For the difficult phrases τὴν Φρυγίαν καὶ Γαλατικὴν χώραν (Acts 16:6) and τὴν Γαλατικὴν χώραν καὶ Φρυγίαν (18:23) and the rival theories of the North and South Galatians see Galatia, and Galatians, Epistle to the, 5.
Literature.-C. Ritter, Die Erdkunde von Asien, 1822-59; W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, 1893, p. 74 f., St. Paul the Traveller, 1895, p. 194 f., Hist. Com. on Galatians, 1899, The Cities of St. Paul, 1907; G. and A. K. Körte, Gordion, 1904; C. v. Weizsacker, The Apostolic Age of the Christian Church, Eng. tr._, 1894-95, i. 273 f.; A. C. McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, 1897, p. 235; J. Moffatt, LNT_, 1911, p. 93 f.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Phrygia'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/p/phrygia.html. 1906-1918.
