Ramsay, William Mitchell: The cities and bishoprics of Phrygia: being an essay of the local history of Phrygia from the earliest time to the Turkish conquest (Band 1,2): West and West-Central Phrygia (Oxford, 1897)

510 XII. CHRISTIAN INSCRIPTIONS OF S.W. PHRYGIA.

would be possible to draw many inferences from the comparative
numbers of Chr. documents found in different districts. But historical
circumstances have affected the numbers; and it is necessary to be
very cautious in reasoning from them. Still, when we find in the
Tchal district six post-Constantinian Chr. inscr. (402-407), and none
earlier; and compare this with the numbers at Eumeneia (four and
twenty-six or more) and Apameia (three and twelve or more), it seems
safe to argue that the Tchal district remained pagan to a very much
later date than the upper Maeander valley. The same inference
might be drawn from other facts : new ideas and a new religion
must have penetrated far more slowly into the uncivilized hill-country
of Tchal, apart from the great lines of intercourse, than into more
educated districts like Apameia and Eumeneia. It is, I believe, safe
to say that the Tchal district was little affected by Christianity before
the fourth century.

In western Banaz-Ova, there is little evidence: inscr. are rare, and
Chr. inscr. are unknown except in the extreme N.W. district (no.
441-444). It is therefore highly improbable that Christianity spread
there very early; and the only pre-Constantinian inscr. (no. 444)
belongs to the N.W. Phrygian class \ which is broadly distinguished
from the Eumenian and Apamean class. Hence we may fairly infer
that early Christianity penetrated into this district from the north,
while there is a belt of country separating the region thus affected
from the region where the Eumenian formula was current.

The eastern Banaz-Ova (with Pepouza, Bria, Sebaste, and Akmonia)
and the Glaukos valley, being in constant communication with the
cities on the upper Maeander, participated in the spread of the new
religion from that side. Here also we find few post-Constantinian
and more early Chr. inscr. But these are the limits to N. and N.E,;
and beyond this we reach a tract of country where Chr. inscr. earlier
than Constantine are unknown, while later ones are numerous: see
Ch. XVII § 3.

Towards E., evidence is too scanty. Pisidian Antioch shares in the
Eumenian, formula; but on the line of the great Highway through

1 This class will be discussed in a time I thought that certain new evi-

later chapter; hut, as yet, I think that dence was against it, and in a public

the theory of diffusion from Bithynia lecture in Oxford I felt compelled to

or Mysia (as stated with confirmatory drawback from the theory; but further

reasons in my Early Chr. Monuments of study shows that I had not properly

Fhrygia I in Expositor VIII p. 264) suits estimated the new evidence, and that

the scanty evidence perfectly: at one my early impression was right.