Troad

He wrote it because he had a brother.

We don't know much about his brother, but his brother died in the Troad in Asia Minor, and he, Catullus, traveled from Italy to Asia Minor to bury him, stand at the grave, and then wrote the elegy some time around then in honor of his brother.

And that's near Troy?

Yeah, there was a Roman settlement on the site of what they thought was the ancient Troy, the province.

But west of this region two peninsulas stretch out from it into the sea, which I will now describe.

On the north side one of the peninsulas begins at the Phasis, and stretches seaward along the Pontus and the Hellespont, as far as Sigeum in the Troad.

On the south side the same peninsula has a sea-coast beginning at the Myriandric Gulf that is near Phoenicia, and stretching seaward as far as the Triopian headland.

On this peninsula live thirty nations.

But, uh, I'll tr- I'll do my best to try to describe the scene to you as we go through some of these things.

So remember that they've been at Troas.

That's where we've spent the majority of the chapter thus far.

Going back up to the very start of Acts 20, there was the riot in Ephesus.

[laughs] You don't call that a coast of the, of the sea, do you? The coast is on land.

But anyway, yeah, the, the eastern side of the Mediterranean.

Instead of doing that, he decides to go back through Macedonia, "And he was accompanied by Sopater of Berea, the son of Pyrhus, and Aristarchus, and Secundus of the Thessalonians, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy, and Tychicus and Trophimus of Asia." Now, some of these names that we're reading about here are still with him as he has gone to Troas and as he is even going to come to Assos and Miletus.

"These had gone on ahead and were waiting for us at Troas, and we sailed from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread and came to them at Troas within five days.

For those who required a lengthy stay, there was music, art, theater, and even religious services.

One interesting side note, since Luke, who was a physician you remember, joined Paul on his second journey at the, at the city of Troas, not far from Pergamum, it's possible Luke was living in this area.

If so, it's possible, even likely, that before he came to Christ, he practiced at this very hospital.

The third kind of religion that was prominent in Pergamum was emperor worship.

[Instrumental music plays]

His destination was the Troad, a plain on the northwestern coast of Turkey.

Although Schliemann was not the first to seek Troy there, he was convinced that with Homer's help, he could succeed where others failed.

Since the 19th century, people have gone to look for Troy in the northwestern corner of what is now Turkey.

But that's a very big area.

Searching the Troad was never going to be easy.

The area covered almost 100 square miles.

And Homer's Troy was a thousand years older than ancient Rome.

Meanwhile, Antiochus and members of his court and family joined a smaller army marching north to settle some territorial and taxation disputes.

Cities around the Troas and the Hellespont in northwest Anatolia were still living under a confusing combination of earlier Seleucid taxation rules from the previous century, new Seleucid expectations from the recent reconquest, and Pergamene rules from Attalus I's brief dominion over the territory.

Antiochus resolved this in at least one case by absolving them of their general tax burden so long as they paid tribute for religious and state festivals, somewhat in an acknowledgement that they had been overpaying for years.

Then, just as Anatolia really looked like it might be settled, Xerxes the king of Sophhene and Antiochus' brother-in-law since marrying the Seleucid princess Antiochis in 212 died.