the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Syracuse
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Συράκουσαι, now Siragosa)
Syracuse was situated on the east coast of Sicily, about midway between the modern Catania and Cape Passaro, and was the wealthiest and most powerful of the Greek cities in the island. ‘So great riches,’ says Strabo (VI. ii. 4), ‘have accrued to the Syracusans that their name is embodied in the proverb applied to those who have too great wealth, viz. that they have not yet attained to a tithe of the wealth of the Syracusans.’ In the 4th cent. b.c. Syracuse defied Athens, when the latter was at the height of her power, and came off victorious. And Syracuse coveted a higher fame than that of warlike prowess. At the Court of her kings were to be found such men of letters as Pindar and aeschylus, while the splendid site which Nature had given her was adorned with some of the finest buildings in the world. There was that in Syracuse which led her admirers to exaggerate. Cicero (in Verr. II. iv. 52) calls her ‘the greatest of Greek cities and the most beautiful of all cities.’ But in the year of Cicero’s death (43 b.c.) Syracuse, and indeed the whole of Sicily, suffered terribly at the hands of Sextus Pompeius; and, though Strabo (loc. cit.) praises Augustus for sending thither a colony and to a great extent restoring the city to its former importance, the geographer’s other words scarcely bear out this flattering statement.
In the Greater or the Lesser Port of this city, under the citadel of Ortygia and close to the fountain of Arethusa, the Alexandrian corn-ship in which St. Paul was sailing from Melita to Puteoli had to tarry three days for a favourable wind. How the Apostle spent those days can only be conjectured. Conybeare and Howson not only suggest that Julius was probably courteous enough to let him go ashore, but have no difficulty in giving credit to the local tradition which makes St. Paul the first founder of the Sicilian Church (The Life and Epistles of St. Paul, 1877, ii. 429 f.). W. M. Ramsay, on the other hand, holds that, as the ship was simply waiting a suitable wind, no prisoner was likely to be allowed leave of absence (Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iv. 645b). Between these theories of a fruitful activity and an enforced idleness there may be room for a via media. If St. Paul was permitted to go into the city, with a charge to note the wind and return the moment it veered to the right direction, he would probably find that there were many Jews and proselytes in that great centre of commerce, though no ancient writer seems to allude to a Jewish colony. And that he would redeem the time is certain. But as to the actual introduction of Christianity into Sicily, whether then or at a later date, history is silent, though the extensive catacombs in the Achradina quarter tell their own tale.
Literature.-W. Smith, Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography , 1868, article ‘Syracusae’; J. Führer and V. Schultze, Die altchristlichen Grabstätten Siziliens, 1907; C. Baedeker, Southern Italy and Sicily15, 1908, pp. 406-420.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Syracuse'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/s/syracuse.html. 1906-1918.
