St. Paul’s missionary labours commenced from the period when the Holy Ghost said, “Separate me Barnabas and Paul for the work whereunto I have called them” (Acts xiii. 2); an order, doubtless, given at Antioch in Syria, as they soon after started from Seleucia, the port of Antioch, for Cyprus, the native home of Barnabas. Antioch was then the capital of Northern Syria, and as much, if not more than Jerusalem, the centre of Christian evangelization. Hence, the natural reason why at Antioch men were “first called Christians.” Seleucia, too, at the mouth of the Orontes, about twenty miles below Antioch, was the “key of Syria,” and had, recently, obtained from Pompey the title of a “Free City,” an honour which it long retained. Dr. Yates (long a resident in the neighbourhood), in an interesting memoir on this city (in the Museum of Classical Antiquities), mentions that the names of the piers at the mouth of its harbour still preserve a record of St. Paul’s voyage, the southern one being called after him, and the northern after Barnabas. Structures so vast as these may easily have remained to the present day, for Pococke states that some of the stones “are twenty feet long by five deep and six wide, and fastened together by iron cramps.” The voyage from Seleucia to Cyprus is, generally, short and easy. The first place they made in the island was Salamis,[114] whence they proceeded right across it to Paphos, the residence of the Roman governor, Sergius Paulus, “a prudent man.” Here we have the remarkable story of Elymas the sorcerer, and of the conversion of the governor on witnessing the miracle by the hand of St. Paul. Cyprus was at that time, as may be gathered from Dio Cassius, under the direct government of the Emperor of Rome, together with Syria and Cilicia; but, a little later, this historian adds that Augustus restored it to the Senate. St. Luke’s title, therefore, of proconsul is correct, as that invariably given to the rulers of the provinces belonging to the Senate. A Cyprian inscription in Boeckh confirms this view. The occurrence of a person called a “sorcerer” at the court of the Roman governor is quite in accordance with the manners of the times. Thus, Juvenal sarcastically speaks of the “Orontes flowing into the Tiber.”[115] Footnote 114: Salamis was on the east side of the island, nearly opposite to Syria; and, in early times, the capital of the island. It was destroyed by the Romans, but rebuilt with the name of Constantia. It was a little to the north of Famagousta, the name of which, curiously enough, is not of Latin origin, as might be supposed, but a lineal descendant of the original Assyrian Ammochosta. Footnote 115: