Richard John Knowling

“ Both external and internal evidence are in favour of a Christian origin, and we have in this epitaph what Ramsay describes, C. R. E. pp. 437 ff., as "a testimony, brief, clear, emphatic, of the truth for which Avircius had contended―the one great figure on the Catholic side produced by the Phrygian church during this period," a man whose wide experience of men and cities might in itself have well marked him out as such a champion. ”

“ Ramsay's attention being drawn to the earlier epitaph, he collected various topographical notices in the Life of the saint, which pointed to Hieropolis, near Synnada (not Hierapolis on the Maeander) , and he further established the case for the former by finding, in 1883, in the bath-room at some hot springs near Hieropolis, a small portion of the epitaph of Abercius himself on the fragment of an altar-shaped tomb; the hot springs in their position near the city exactly correspond with the position of the hot springs described in the Life. ”

“ We thus recover an instructive and enduring monument of Christian life in the 2nd cent., all the more remarkable because it is presented to us, not in any systematic form, but as the natural and simple expression of a pure and devout soul. For full literature, see Zahn, u.s.; for the development of the legend from the facts mentioned in the epitaph, and for the reconstruction of the text by Lightfoot and Ramsay, see three articles by the latter in Expositor, ix. (3rd ser.) , also Ramsay's Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, ii. 722. In addition to literature above, cf. art. ”