Practically the verdict of Ramsay and Turner on Thecla is, “the _Acts of Thecla_ . . . expand the hints of St. Luke and throw a welcome light on the social conditions.” Luke refers to “many women” attending Paul’s services in the house of Onesiphorus. In other words, Thecla was a personality, but her real history is lost in legend. Of the legend, how closely have the facts been followed in this story? Modern decency would not permit all the details of the insults to Thecla, so these are shortened in the story here. She was exposed not only in the arena of Iconium but in the arena of Antioch for repulsing the lewd advances of the city magistrate, who in one of the fêtes represented the god Roma and proceeded to claim her as a vestal virgin. All these details have been omitted or shortened in the story, and her experiences have been centered at Iconium. For the rest, the story conforms to the facts of the age. The Greeks were the rich trader class despised by the soldierly Romans. Men were addicted to effeminacy, jealousy, self-adornment; and the Greek matrons chased their daughters into early marriages to avoid having evidence of age in their family. Paul was called a “Jewish babbler” here as he was in Greece. Girls who would neither marry nor become temple vestals were thrust in the streets as courtesans. The red cord of the courtesan marked the difference between the temple virgins consecrated to the god and the temple girl kept as a bait for lust and revenue, of which one Aphrodite Temple had a colossal revenue. Gnostics will deny that the names of “the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost” were used in baptism before the fourth century. I refuse to discuss the controversy—it is nonessential to the true picture of conditions set forth in the story. There is one interesting minor point for the argumentative to worry over. Paul refers again and again to the man with shaved hair, the woman with unshaved and covered head, both references really advising the Christian away from the temple vices which becurled men and women with short red-corded hair symbolized. There is a reference to Paul taking a vow, himself, that carried him to Jerusalem. (Acts xviii, 18). He had his head shaved. Now, the Thecla legend describes Paul as “bald,” like a man who, Roman fashion, had always worn his hair short. Yet the most of the pictures of Paul and the other early saints represent them with hair like a thatch, beards like Druids, and expressions about as cheerful as an inverted tablespoon, though their evangel was called “the Glad News,” and the keynote of Paul’s life was—“Rejoice.” APPENDIX E CONCERNING THE EARLY GNOSTICS AND APOLLOS AND APOLLONIUS AND JOHN