Excerpt from Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians History. Of Ephesus is lost in an extremely remote antiquity. In the eleventh century before Christ, Androc lus, son of the Athenian Codrus, is said to have estab lished a Greek colony there,1 but at a still earlier period Phoenician emigrants seem to have been attracted to it on account of its convenient situation, and to have con tributed largely to its material prosperity. Their presence soon made itself felt, by impressing a special stamp upon the habits and customs of the place, and may account for many of the social and religious practices which came to be regarded as characteristic of its culture. The natural situa tion of the town, within easy reach from behind of the great producing districts of the time, and favoured with a con veniently central position that allowed ready egress toward Greece and Italy on the one hand, and toward the ports of the Eastern Mediterranean on the other, insured to it com mercial prosperity, and steady growth in population and in political importance. The enterprising Phoenician traders would find it less difficult to effect a settlement there, inas much as the deities whom they worshipped were the same as, or at least very similar to, those of the earlier inhabitants of the land, and the religious modes of thought prevalent among both peoples in general harmonised. The priesthood. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.