Acts 16:19

ὅτι ἐξ. ἡ ἐλπὶς κ. τ. λ.: “The most sensitive part of ‘civilised' man is his pocket,” Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 237, and we can see how bitter was the hostility excited both here and at Ephesus when the new faith threatened existing pecuniary profits. ἐπιλαβ.: here with hostile intent, see above on Acts 9:27 and further on Acts 17:19. εἵλκυσαν : with violence, so ἕλκω in James 2:4 (Acts 21:30), cf. Saul before his conversion, Acts 8:3, σύρων. “Everywhere money the cause of evils: O that heathen cruelty! they wished the girl to be still a demoniac, that they might make money by her!” Chrys., Hom., xxx., 5. εἰς τὴν ἀγ.: where the magistrates would sit, as in the Roman forum. ἄρχοντας … στρατηγοῖς : it is of course possible that the two clauses mean the same thing, and that the expressions halt, as Lightfoot and Ramsay maintain, between the Greek form and the Latin, between the ordinary Greek term for the supreme board of magistrates in any city ἄρχοντες, and the popular Latin designation στρατηγοί, prætores (“non licet distinguere inter ἀρχ. et στρατ.,” Blass, so O. Holtzmann, Weiss, Wendt). But the former may mean the magistrates who happened to be presiding at the time in the forum, whereas the milder verb προσαγαγόντες may imply that there was another stage in the case, and that it was referred to the στρατηγοί, the prætors (as they called themselves), because they were the chief magisterial authorities, and the accusation assumed a political form. Meyer and Zöckler, H. Holtzmann distinguish between the two, as if ἄρχ. were the local magistrates of the town, cf. πολιτάρχης, Acts 17:6. In the municipia and coloniæ the chief governing power was in the hands of duoviri who apparently in many places assumed the title of prætors, cf. Cicero, De Leg. Agr., ii., 34, where he speaks with amusement of the duoviri at Capua who showed their ambition in this way, cf. Horace, Sat., i., 5, 34. A duumvir of Philippi is a title borne out by inscriptions, Lightfoot, Phil., p. 51, note; Felten, p. 315.