Phrygia (fryj'i-ah), dry, barren. A district of Asia Minor whose limits varied at different times. Within its limits were the cities of Laodicæa, Hierapolis, Colossæ, and Antioch of Pisidia. People from Phrygia were present at Pentecost, Acts 2:10; and the apostle Paul twice traversed the country. Acts 16:6; Acts 18:23. Some converts were made, and we find Paul "strengthening all the disciples." Acts 18:23. At the Council of Nice, a.d. 325, the Phrygian churches were represented by eight bishops, and still more attended the Council of Constantinople, a.d. 381.

Dry, an irregular and ill-defined district in Asia Minor. It was divided into two parts, the Greater Phrygia on the south, and the Lesser Phrygia on the west. It is the Greater Phrygia that is spoken of in the New Testament. The towns of Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:14 ), Colosse, Hierapolis, Iconium, and Laodicea were situated in it.

Originally a small kingdom in Asia Minor, Phrygia was divided in two when the Romans redrew the provincial boundaries in Asia Minor. Under the Roman administration the western part of Phrygia, which included the towns of Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis, fell within the province of Asia. The eastern part fell within the province of Galatia (Acts 2:10; Acts 16:6; Acts 18:23). (For maps see ASIA; GALATIA.)

(frihg' ihaw) Place name meaning, “parched.” In very ancient times the area immediately west of the Hellespont. Later, the people migrated into Asia Minor. During Roman times, Phrygia was a subregion of Galatia, and her people often were slaves or servants. The area remained relatively undefined but contained Antioch of Pisidia, Laodicea, and at times, Iconium. Some of the Phrygians were present in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost and heard the gospel in their native language (Acts 2:10 ; compare Acts 16:6 ; Acts 18:23 ). See Asia Minor.

Dry; barren

The W. part of the center of Asia Minor; varying in its definition at different times, and contributing parts to several Roman provinces (Acts 2:10). Paul passed through Phrygia in his second (Acts 16:6) and third (Acts 18:23) missionary journeys. An ethnological not political division. The Taurus range separated Phrygia from Pisidia on the S.; Caria, Lydia, Mysia, Bithynia were on its W. and N.; Galatia, Cappadocia, and Lycaonia on the E. It is a tableland. The Phrygia meant in Scripture is the southern portion (called "greater Phrygia") of the region above, and contained Laodicea, Hierapolis, Colosse, and Iconium. It was peopled by an Indo Germanic race from Armenia, who formed the oldest population of Asia Minor.

PHRYGIA . The Phrygians were an Aryan race who seem to have had their first home in Thrace, and to have crossed into Asia through the same southward movement of tribes that brought the Hellenes into Greece. In Asia they occupied at one time the greater part of the country W. of the Halys, probably displacing a Semitic race from whom they may have learned the worship of Cybele. We must regard Homer’s Trojans as part of the Phrygian race, and the Trojan War as a contest between them and Greek settlers from Thessaly. In more historical times the name Phrygia applies to an inland region varying in extent at different times, but bounded at its widest by the Sangarius on the N., the Halys on the E., the Taurus range on the S. It thus covered the W. part of the great plateau of Asia Minor and the upper valleys of the rivers Mæander and Hermus. It was a region fruitful in oil and wine, exporting also wool, gold, marble, and salt.

When the Romans inherited the kingdom of Pergamus in b.c. 133, a part of Phrygia was included in the province of Asia, but the southern portion towards Pamphylla was not included. This portion was in the hands of the dependent king of Galatia when Augustus constituted Galatia a province in b.c. 25, and was therefore included in the new province which extended from Lycia on the S.W. almost to the mouth of the Halys on the N.E. Hence this portion of Phrygia, with its cities of Antioch and Iconium, came to be known as Phrygia Galatica.

This country was included by St. Paul in the work of his first missionary journey (Acts 13:14 to Acts 14:24 ). From Perga he and Barnabas made their way N. along the difficult mountain road to Antioch, here called ‘Pisidian Antioch’ (see Pisidia). On his second missionary journey St. Paul (now accompanied by Silas) began with the churches of Cilicia and then passed through Derbe and Lystra, where he took Timothy into his company. The narrative then proceeds ( Acts 16:6 ): ‘And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia [Gr. ‘the Phrygian and Galatian region’], having been forbidden [AV [Note: Authorized Version.] ‘and were forbidden’] of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia; and when they were come over against Mysia they assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not; and passing by Mysia they came down to Troas.’ The natural interpretation of this is that from Lystra they traversed Phrygia Galatica , from Antioch took the road leading N. to Dorylaion, where they would be near Bithynia, and from there were directed W. to Troas. Attempts have been made, however, to find here an evangelization of Galatia proper with its towns of Pessinus and Ancyra. But against this we must set (1) the form of the Greek phrase ‘the Phrygian and Galatian region’; (2) the strange silence of St. Luke about a work that must have taken a considerable time; (3) the geographical consideration that the travellers could not have crossed the desert of the Axylon straight from S. to N. and must in any case have used the road to Dorylaion. See, further, artt. Galatia and Galatians [Ep. To] for this and the further question whether the Epistle to the Galatians can have been written to the churches of Phrygia Galatica. If it was, we have an interesting glimpse of how in the churches first founded by St. Paul his authority was very soon (perhaps a.d. 50) assailed by Judaizers, who disputed his Apostolic credentials and declared his doctrine to be an imperfect form of Christianity, neglecting its Jewish basis.

The third missionary journey likewise began with ‘the region of Galatia and Phrygia’ (Acts 18:23 ), or ‘the Galatian region and Phrygia.’ Here the reference is probably to the same churches, but the order of words is doubtless meant to include the churches of Lycaonia first these were in the province of Galatia, but were not in Phrygia. The order is in any case strongly against the inclusion of Galatia proper. The journey was continued ‘through the upper country to Ephesus,’ i.e. along the direct route which passed through the higher country from Metropolis to Ephesus, instead of the high road which followed the valley of the Lycus.

A. E. Hillard.

(Φρυγία)

Phrygia, the land of the Phryges, was the western part of the central plateau of Asia Minor. Its boundaries were vague and varying. At one time it extended from the aegean to the Halys, and from the mountains of Bithynia to the Taurus, but it was gradually contracted on every side. To the early Greeks Phrygia was the home of a heroic and conquering race, who have left in the country drained by the upper Sangarius many astonishing monuments of their greatness.

‘In Phrygia once were gallant armies known

In ancient time, when Otreus filled the throne,

When godlike Migdon led his troops of horse’

(Hom. Il. iii. 185 f.).

But to the later Greeks and the Romans Phrygia was politically unimportant, and the once illustrious names of Midas and Manes were given to Phrygian slaves. The Kimmerian inundation in the 7th cent. broke the spirit of the race, who sank into a state of peaceful indolence, disturbed only by fits of wild religious excitement. Their land became an easy prey to every spoiler, and in 278 b.c. the Gauls took possession of N.E. Phrygia, which was henceforth known as Galatia. Attalus 1. of Pergamos (241-197 b.c.) seized the territory in which lay the towns of Kotiaion and Dorylaion, and which was thereafter called ‘Acquired Phrygia’ (Phrygia Epictetus). In the S.E. was Iconium (q.v._), which the natives continued to regard as Phrygian. while Roman writers assigned it to Lycaonia. In the S. was Pisidian Phrygia (Ptol. v. v. 4) or Phrygia towards Pisidia (πρὸς Πισιδίᾳ [Strabo, xii. pp. 557, 566]), the most important town of which was called Antioch towards Pisidia; but as Pisidia gradually extended northwards this Antioch ceased to be Phrygian and was called Pisidian Antioch (q.v._). Only in the S.W. did the Phrygians show any sign of expansion. Hierapolis was apparently once Lydian, and Laodicea Carian; but in the Roman period all the cities of the Lycus Valley were regarded as Phrygian. ‘The Gate of Phrygia’ was below the junction of the Lycus and Maeander; Polemon of Laodicea was known as ‘the Phrygian’; and ‘Phrygian powder’ was a Laodicean preparation.

In the Roman provincial system of government Asia Minor was cut and carved with but little regard for old national and historical distinctions. While the eastern part of Phrygia (with Iconium) and the southern (with Pisidia) were attached to the province of Galatia, the western part, which was much the larger, was included in the province of Asia. The former was called Phrygia Galatica and the latter Phrygia Asiana.

Phrygia was traversed by the great route of traffic and intercourse which joined the aegean with Syria and the Euphrates. Along this line the early Seleucids planted a series of Greek cities for the defence of their Empire and the diffusion of Hellenic culture. Here the Greek language gradually displaced the Phrygian, which was ‘perhaps similar in character to the Armenian’ (T. Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, Eng. tr._, 1909, i. 328), but the latter continued to hold its ground in the rural districts down to the 3rd cent. of our era. A striking feature in the life of these cities was the presence of Jews in large numbers.

Their status is indicated by Josephus (Ant. XII. iii. 1). ‘The Jews also obtained honours from the kings of Asia, when they became their auxiliaries; for Seleucus Nicator made them citizens of those cities which he built in Asia … and gave them privileges equal to those of the Macedonians and Greeks, who were the inhabitants, insomuch that these privileges continue to this very day.’ Antiochus the Great (223-187 b.c.) ‘thought proper to remove 2000 families of Jews, with their effects, out of Mesopotamia and Babylon’ to Lydia and Phrygia (XII. iii. 4).

In these Hellenistic cities the Jews relaxed their strictness so much that the orthodox counted them degenerate. There is a bitter saying in the Talmud to the effect that the baths and wines of Phrygia had separated the ‘Ten Tribes’ from the brethren (A. Neubauer, La Géogr. du Talmud, 1868, p. 315). This very liberalism, however, probably made the reaction of the Jews on their environment all the greater, and St. Paul found in the cities of Phrygia numerous proselytes, whose minds proved the best soil for the seed of the evangel. The case of Timothy of Lystra, the son of a Greek father and a Jewish mother, uncircumcised and yet acquainted from his childhood with the Scriptures, was probably typical.

Phrygia was one of the first parts of Asia Minor to be generally Christianized. Not a few Christian monuments of the 2nd cent., and very many of the 3rd, have been found in the country. Eusebius (HE_ viii. 11) says that in the time of Diocletian there was a Phrygian city in which every single soul was Christian. The enthusiasm with which the pagan Phrygians were in the habit of throwing themselves into the worship of Cybele re-appeared in the Phrygian type of Christianity, which gave birth to Montanism with its spiritual ecstasies and prophetic visions.

For the difficult phrases τὴν Φρυγίαν καὶ Γαλατικὴν χώραν (Acts 16:6) and τὴν Γαλατικὴν χώραν καὶ Φρυγίαν (18:23) and the rival theories of the North and South Galatians see Galatia, and Galatians, Epistle to the, 5.

Literature.-C. Ritter, Die Erdkunde von Asien, 1822-59; W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, 1893, p. 74 f., St. Paul the Traveller, 1895, p. 194 f., Hist. Com. on Galatians, 1899, The Cities of St. Paul, 1907; G. and A. K. Körte, Gordion, 1904; C. v. Weizsacker, The Apostolic Age of the Christian Church, Eng. tr._, 1894-95, i. 273 f.; A. C. McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, 1897, p. 235; J. Moffatt, LNT_, 1911, p. 93 f.

James Strahan.