The site of ancient Thessalonica has been continuously inhabited as an important city ever since its foundation by the forceful Macedonian king, Cassander, in the last years of the fourth century before Christ. Yet few ancient cities of equal importance have been the subject of so little investigation in modern times. Up to now, the inscriptions found in Salonica have all been chance discoveries, almost invariably due to such causes as the demolition of the old city walls during the last decades of the nineteenth and the early years of this century, the remodelling or removal of older buildings and other construction inevitable in the life of a large port and center of population. For these reasons it must be emphasized that the several hundred pagan Greek inscriptions of Thessalonica whose texts are now known (many of the stones once seen have been lost or destroyed) are in fact a quite fortuitous body of evidence. The following pages, therefore, cannot pretend to be a balanced and complete study of the religious cults of pagan Thessalonica. That is a task for the future when circumstances will, we must hope, permit a continuous and accurate study of the existing ancient remains, as well as of those new discoveries which may confidently be anticipated. Here I have only attempted to put together what can now be said about the cults of the Roman city.

Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin in a recent address told of a student at Union Theological Seminary who persistently refused to come to chapel. Queried on his absence by Dr. Coffin, the student replied that he could not approve the hymns which were sung in James Chapel because many of them did not teach sound doctrine. In order to satisfy the student's conscience, Dr. Coffin suggested he come on a day when only the hymns of Watts would be used. The student's devastating remark finished any attempt to bring him to chapel: “I don't consider Watts really ‘safe,’” he blandly asserted.

A small gem in the possession of Mr. Henri Seyrig, Director of the French Archaeological Institute in Beyrouth, may be briefly described as follows:

Obverse. Inscription in five lines, μέγα τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου Σάραπις. Crescent moon under the last line.

Reverse. Inscription in six and a half lines,μεγάλη τύχη τῆς ἀνικήτον νεωτέρας. Star after the last letter.

Brown and dark green jasper. Upright oval, 18 × 13 mm.

The obverse inscription, without κυρίου, encircles a bust a Sarapis engraved on a jasper in the British Museum; see British Museum Quarterly, 11, 33-34. Several more examples, all omitting κυρίου, are cited by Peterson (Heis Theos, 208 f.). Almost all of them treat the name Σάραπις as indeclinable. Evidently the sentence is a common acclamation, which requires no further comment.

The inscription on the reverse, which has not been found elsewhere in just this form, needs closer examination.