Again at Malta we read of the _chief-man_ Publius; the accuracy of which title (for it is a _title_, and does not mean merely the most important man) is also proved by inscriptions, though as far as we know it was peculiar to that island.[248] At Thessalonica, on the other hand, the magistrates have the curious title of _politarchs_, translated 'rulers of the city.'[249] This name does not occur in any classical author in this form, so the writer of the Acts used to be accused of a blunder here. His critics were unaware that an old arch was standing all the time at this very place, the modern Salonica, with an inscription containing this very word, saying it was built when certain men were the politarchs. The arch was destroyed in 1876, but the stone containing the inscription was preserved, and is now in the British Museum.[250] And since then other inscriptions have been found, showing that the term was in use all through the first century. [Footnote 248: Acts 28. 7; Boeckh's Corp. Ins. Lat. X., No. 7495; Corp. Ins. Gr., No. 5754.] [Footnote 249: Acts 17. 6.] [Footnote 250: In the Central Hall, near the Library.] Nor is this accuracy confined to well-known places on the coast; it extends wherever the narrative extends, even to the interior of Asia Minor. For though the rulers there are not mentioned, the writer was evidently well acquainted with the places he refers to. Take _Lystra_, for instance.[251] According to the writer, it was a city of Lycaonia, though the adjacent town of Iconium was not, and this has been recently proved to be correct. And it is interesting, because many classical authors wrongly assign Iconium to Lycaonia; while Lystra, though belonging to that province in the first century, was separated from it early in the second; so a late writer, or one ignorant of the locality, might easily have made a mistake in either case. And an inscription found near Lystra, in 1909, shows that the two gods, Jupiter and Mercury (_i.e._, Zeus and Hermes) were commonly associated together by the inhabitants, as they are represented to be in the Acts. [Footnote 251: Acts 14. 1-12; Ramsay, Bearing of Recent Discovery on New Testament, 1915, pp. 48-63.] (2.) _The riot at Ephesus._ As a second example we will take the account of the _riot at Ephesus_. All the allusions here to the worship of Diana, including her image believed to have fallen from heaven (perhaps a meteorite roughly cut into shape), her magnificent shrine, the small silver models of this, her widespread worship, and the fanatical devotion of her worshippers, are all in strict agreement with what we know from other sources.