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WITH THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA MINOR. /I
iEsculapius and Hygeia, appear on the medals which remain. They had another property, that of assisting the tincture extracted from vegetable dyes, and imparting to
wool its richest purple.
Besides its hot springs, Hierapolis was distinguished by a very remarkable and deleterious exhalation, called very properly, plutonium, as appertaining to the key of the
infernal regions. This was a small excavation in an adjoining mountain, having an area
before it of four or five hundred yards in circumference. This space was always filled
with a dense vapour, so that the bottom could not be discerned. Like the modern Grotto
del Cane, this vapour was mortal to those who breathed it; bulls and other animals
were driven into the enclosure, and immediately fell down suffocated; and birds, as at
Averno, dropped senseless when attempting to fly across it. The priests of Cybele,
availing themselves of this mephitic cavern, pretended to work a miracle. They alone
were able to walk through the exhalation unhurt. The imposture is easily detected ; the
vapour is carbonic acid gas, like that of the grotto in Italy ; it is a dense and heavy fluid,
which does not rise high above the ground. Animals, whose heads are immersed in it,
are immediately suffocated; but those who walk erect, above the surface, pass through it
with impunity.
PHILADELPHIA.
Of all the churches of the Apocalypse, Philadelphia retains more of its former
Christian character than any other. Ephesus and Sardis are not but Philadelphia is;
and the profession of Christianity is not only cherished there by a large population, but
it is presided over by a Christian bishop; and while the cooing of turtle-doves in every
tree, the mansion of the filial stork in every roof, and sundry other objects of nature,
of soothing sound and placid aspect, reminds the traveller of its Christian name,
Philadelphia, or " brotherly love," the Turks, as if to mark its former sanctity, now call
it Allah Sher, or the " City of God." The inhabitants, too, are of a most urbane
character, and have obtained for themselves, in the barbarism that surrounds them, the
eulogy of being a " kind and civil people."
The city was originally built, like many others that long adorned Asia Minor, by
descendants of the enterprising soldiers that followed Alexander the Great in his Persian
expedition; who, after carrying war and its destructive train into the countries of the East,
compensated their ravages by building cities in the place of those they had destroyed, and
leaving behind them the arts and language of Greece. Attalus Philadelphus selected
a site at the foot of Mount Tmolus, and called it Philadelphus, after himself. When
Christianity expanded, the inhabitants early received the Gospel, and it became one
of the churches distinguished by the Evangelist among the seven. He eulogizes it as
that which "kept the word of God, and denied not his name." An impression remained |
