The latter, or imperial provinces, were governed by a legate or commissioner chosen directly by the emperor, and he served so long as the emperor wished. He always went out to his province with military pomp as a commander. =11. Syria= was an =imperial province=, and was governed by a legate or commissioner of the emperor stationed at Antioch. Judæa, however, was a special province, and its distance from Antioch and its peculiar people required a special officer under the commissioner at Antioch, and this officer was called a procurator. He had his headquarters at Cæsarea, Acts 23:23, wore the military dress, and had a cohort as a body-guard, Matt. 27:27, called in this passage “the soldiers of the governor;” moreover, he had the power of life and death, Matt. 27:26, in his own province. =12. At the interview which Saul had= with the proconsul, called here the “deputy,” there was one of the class known at that day as sorcerers. This man greatly interfered with the apostle’s effort to explain the new faith to the proconsul, who had requested instruction. =13. Peter had encountered= one of this class before, Acts 8:9. The apostle now addressed the so-called sorcerer in terrible rebuke, foretelling his immediate blindness for a season, and thereby showing that behind the earnest and reasonable presentation of the great truths of the new faith which had fully persuaded the proconsul there lay the reserved authority of so great supernatural power to attest the divinity of the doctrine.[192] That this is the meaning of the verse in Acts 13:12 is evident from a verse in Luke 4:32, which shows that it was the method of confirming the doctrine, and not the doctrine itself, which caused the astonishment spoken of in the verse. =14. From this time Saul’s name= is changed into Paul, and the other name never occurs again in Scripture. The apostle and his companions now sailed from Paphos to the city of Perga in Pamphylia, 175 miles northwest. Mark left them at Perga and returned to Jerusalem for reasons not explained in the text. =Perga= exists as a ruin six or seven miles from the seacoast and about 15 miles northeast of a seaport called Adalia by the Turks, the ancient Attalia, built by Attalus, the king of Pergamos, 159‒138 B. C., and hence its name. It has at present about 8,000 inhabitants, and surrounds the port as an amphitheatre, the streets rising one above another. =15. From Perga= the apostle proceeded to Antioch, now called Yalobatch, about 90 miles north of Perga. The plain upon which Perga is situated is about 20 miles wide on the seacoast, and stretches eastward for about 30 miles. East of Perga the Eurymedon River comes down through the plain into the sea, and its sources are high in the ridges north of Perga. It is probable that up the valley of this river the apostles passed to the high table-land of Pisidia upon which Antioch is placed.