In Tarsus the future apostle came into close contact with the greatest teachers and scholars of his time, and was thus prepared to enter the intellectual arena with the keenest minds of Greece and Rome. Being, as he could proudly boast, “a Roman of no mean city,” as well as a disciple of Gamaliel, one of the seven wise men of the Jews, he was peculiarly fitted to preach the truths of the Gospel not only to his own people but also to the much greater world of the Gentiles. Never was a more important or a more far-reaching mission entrusted to mortal man. It is not too much to say that no one of his time was better equipped for it than the tent maker of Tarsus. Wherever he could secure a hearing for his marvelous message he was sure to go--to the synagogue, to the agora, to the courts of governors and consuls. Learned in the Law and the Prophets, he was a match for the ablest teachers of Israel. Familiar with the literature and philosophy of the pagan world, he spoke as one having authority before the “Men of Athens” and the representatives of the Cæsars. Thanks to the opportunities which he enjoyed in his youth of associating with the wise and learned men of Tarsus and to his thorough acquaintance with the highest forms of Greek culture, he was able, through his quick intelligence and his ardent love of souls, “to recognize and sympathize with the strivings of those who, living in the times of ignorance, were yet seeking after God, ‘if haply they might feel after Him and find Him,’ and to read in their aspirations after a higher life the work of the law written in the hearts of all men.”[210] As one wanders through the narrow and squalid streets of modern Tarsus--a city of less than twenty thousand inhabitants--one finds no vestige whatever of its former splendor. But few ruins remain, the most conspicuous of which is the concrete foundation of a Roman structure popularly regarded as the tomb of the cynical voluptuary, Sardanapalus. No tradition indicates the house of the Apostle of the Gentiles or points to any church dedicated to his memory. The banks of the silt-filled Cydnus are lonely and desolate. Owing to the neglected condition of the river channel, no white-winged ships are here visible, as of yore, laden with the treasures of foreign lands. And yet it was up this now abandoned stream that Cleopatra sailed in her gorgeous barge when she came to answer the challenge of Mark Anthony. How, by her surpassing address, she led captive the great triumvir is admirably described by Shakespeare, who, following Plutarch, paints the famous picture of her entrance into Tarsus, which was then in the dazzling splendor of oriental magnificence: