The Roman Province of Asia included most of the western half of Asia Minor, with the countries or regions

of Caria, Lydia, Phrygia, Mysia, and the coast-lands of the Troad, Aeolis and Ionia. It was the earliest

Roman possession on the continent of Asia. Conquered by the Romans in the war against Antiochus the

Great, it was given by them to their ally Eumenes, King of Pergamum, at the peace which was concluded in

189 BC; and in 133 BC it was bequeathed by his nephew and adopted son Attalus III to the great

conquering people. The real existence of this will, formerly suspected to be a mere invention of the Romans,

is now established by definite testimony. The King knew that the illegitimate Aristonicus would claim the

Kingdom, and that there was no way of barring him out except through the strength of Rome.

Thus Asia had been a Roman Province for more than two hundred years when the Seven Letters were

written. Its history under Roman rule had been chequered. It was the wealthiest region of the whole Roman

Empire, and was therefore peculiarly tempting to the greed of the average Roman official. Amid the

misgovernment and rapacity that attended the last years of the Republic, Asia suffered terribly. The Asiatics

possessed money; and the ordinary Roman, whose characteristic faults were greed and cruelty, shrank from

no crime in order to enrich himself quickly during his short tenure of office in the richest region of the world.

Hence the Province welcomed with the enthusiasm of people brought back from death to life the advent of

the Empire, which inaugurated an era of comparative peace, order, and respect for property. In no part of the

world, probably, was there such fervent and sincere loyalty to the Emperors as in Asia. Augustus had been

a saviour to the Asian peoples, and they deified him as the Saviour of mankind, and worshipped him with

the most whole -hearted devotion as the God incarnate in human form, the "present deity." He alone stood

between them and death or a life of misery and torture. They hailed the birthday of Augustus as the

beginning of a new year, and worshipped the incarnate God in public and in private.

In order to understand rightly the position of Christianity in Asia and the spirit of the Seven Asian Letters, it

is necessary to conceive clearly the means whereby the Imperial policy sought to unify and consolidate the

Province. There can be little doubt that several of the features of Christianity were determined in Asia.

Roman Provincial unity, founded in a common religion, was the strongest idea in Asia, and it must inevitably

influence, whether directly or through the recoil from and opposition to it, the growth of such an

organisation as the Church in Asia, for the Christian Church from the beginning recognised the political

facts of the time and accommodated itself to them.

Meetings of representatives of the Asian cities were held at least as early as 95 BC, and probably date from

the time of the Pergamenian kings. Doubtless the kings tried to make their kingdom a real unity, with a

common feeling and patriotism, and not merely an agglomeration of parts tied together under compulsion

and external authority; and, if so, they could attain this end only by instituting a common worship. In the

case of the Asian Commune a Pergamenian origin seems proved by the name of t he representatives in the

official formula "it seemed good to the Hellenes in Asia." It appears improbable that an assembly which had

been formed by the Romans for diffusing Roman ideas would have borne officially the name of "the

Hellenes in Asia." But the Pergamenian kings counted themselves the champions of Hellenism against

Asiatic barbarism; and their partisans in the cities were "the Hellenes."

Such common cults had always the same origin, viz., in an agreement among the persons or cities concerned

to unite for certain purposes, and to make certain deities witnesses and patrons of their union. Thus every

treaty between two cities had its religious side, and involved the common performance of rites by

representatives of both sides: these rites might be performed either to the patron gods of the two cities

(which was usual), or to some god or gods chosen by common consent. The same process was applied

when a larger body of cities agreed (of course first of all by negotiations and treaty) to form a union. Every

such union of cities had its religious side and its religious sanction in rites performed by representatives of