When St. Paul enumerates in his Second Letter to the Corinthian Church the dangers through which he has passed in the prosecution of his missionary labours he includes κινδύνοις λῃστῶν, ‘perils of robbers’ (2 Corinthians 11:26). There can be little doubt that, while this peril may have existed on many of the routes in Asia Minor, it existed in a special degree on that through the Taurus mountains by which St. Paul reached Antioch. However valuable for health reasons the journey to the higher land may have been, it involved positive dangers, ‘perils of rivers’ not less than ‘perils of robbers.’ While the Roman authorities had set themselves the task of suppressing brigandage, and visited upon brigands the stern punishment of crucifixion, it was obviously impossible to make that suppression complete, especially in mountainous or relatively obscure districts. Augustus discovered how hopeless was the task of rooting out the brigands of the Pisidian mountains. Travellers who could afford it usually adopted the wise precaution of having an escort.
Epigraphic study, associated chiefly with the names of Sterrett and Ramsay, has served to give interesting evidence of the insecurity which prevailed amid the Taurus heights. Patrokles and Douda, for example, set up an epitaph in memory of their son Sousou, a policeman who was slain by robbers, while there is evidence also for the existence of an official-the stationarius-who had to lend assistance in the capture of runaway slaves, a class from which the ranks of the mountain robbers might be must easily recruited.
Emphatic statements respecting the prevalence of robbers during the stormy period preceding the fall of Jerusalem, and an account of the measures adopted by Felix in consequence, may be found in Josephus-‘as to the number of the robbers he caused to be crucified, and of those who were caught among them, and whom he brought to punishment, they were a multitude not to be enumerated’ (Bellum Judaicum (Josephus) II. xiii. 2).
Literature.-C. A. J. Skeel, Travel in the First Century after Christ, Cambridge, 1901; J. R. S. Sterrett, Epigraphic Journey in Asia Minor, Boston, 1888; W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, London, 1893, p. 23 f. article ‘Roads and Travel (in NT)’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) v.
R. Strong.