Note 663 — EPISTLE TO PHILEMON.

Acts xiv. 11 οἵ θεοὶ ὁμοιωθέντες ἀνθρώποις κατέβησαν πρὸς ἡμᾶς κ.τ.λ. There are two points worth observing in the Phrygian legend, as illustrating the Apostolic history. (1) It is a miracle, which opens the eyes of the peasant couple to the divinity of their guests thus disguised; (2) The immediate effect of this miracle is their attempt to sacrifice to their divine visitors, ‘dis hospitibus mactare parabant’. The familiarity with this beautiful story may have suggested to the barbarians of Lystra, whose ‘Lycaonian speech’ was not improbably a dialect of Phrygian, that the same two gods, Zeus and Hermes, had again visited this region on an errand at once of beneficence and of vengeance, while at the same time it would prompt them to conciliate the deities by a similar mode of propitiation, ἤθελον θύειν.