Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 16:12

"and from thence to Philippi, which is a city of Macedonia, the first of the district, a [Roman] colony: and we were in this city tarrying certain days." — Acts 16:12 (ASV)

The chief city of that part of Macedonia.—More accurately, a chief (or first) city of the border-country of Macedonia. The description is not without difficulty and has been noted by adverse critics as an instance of St. Luke’s inaccuracy. The city of Philippi, rebuilt by the father of Alexander the Great and bearing his name in place of Krenides (= the fountains), was situated on the Gangites, a tributary of the Strymon; but it was not the chief city of any one of the four subdivisions of the Roman province of Macedonia, that rank being assigned to Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Pella, and Pelagonia.

As there is no definite article in the Greek, it is possible that St. Luke simply meant to say it was a chief town of the district, the epithet Prôte (= first) being often found on the coins of cities which were not capitals. The more probable explanation, however, is that he uses the Greek word translated “part” in the sense of “border-land,” as in the LXX of Ezekiel 35:7 and Ruth 3:7, and that it was the first city of that frontier district, either as the most important or as being the first to which they came on the route they traveled. This was precisely the position of Philippi, which, together with Pella and other towns, had been garrisoned by the Romans as outposts against the neighboring tribes of Thrace. It had been established as a colony by Augustus after the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, and its full title, as seen on the coins of the city, was Colonia Augusta Julia Philippensis.

A colony.—The English reader needs to be reminded that a Roman colonia differed from a modern colony in being essentially a military position. Portions of the conquered territory were commonly assigned to veteran soldiers, and the settlement thus formed was considered politically an integral part of Rome, all decrees of the emperor or senate being as binding there as in the capital itself. The colonies thus formed were like the “propugnacula imperii” (Cicero, De Lege Agraria c. 27) and “populi Romani quasi effigies parvæ simulacraque” (Aulus Gellius xvi. 13). Here, then, in the first European city to which St. Paul came, there was something like a foretaste of his future victories. Himself a Roman citizen, he was brought into direct contact with Romans. (See Note on Acts 16:21.)