Acts 16:8

Acts 16:8. Troas. This famous place bearing the name of the ancient Troy was a seaport on the Hellespont, situated some four or five miles from the supposed site of the ancient city. It was built and named after the great Macedonian king ‘Alexandria Troas' by two of his successors, Antigonus, who founded it, and Lysimachus, who completed the work and named it. By the Romans in the days of their greatest power it was regarded as New Troy, and was then one of the most important cities of Proconsular Asia. It is reported that Julius Cæsar intended to make it eventually the capital of the Roman Empire, both of the east and west. Some three centuries later, Constantine the Great, before he finally chose Byzantium as the site of his world-capital, had fixed upon Alexandria Troas as the future seat of his vast united empire. Gibbon writes: ‘Though the undertaking was soon relinquished, the stately remains of unfinished walls and towers attracted the notice of all who sailed through the Hellespont.' In the days of Paul it had not attained to its utmost growth, but it possessed the privileges of a Roman colony, and the law had been assimilated already to that of Italy, these rights having been conferred upon it by Augustus.