PISIDIA pĭ sĭd’ e ə (Πισίδια). A contour map of Asia Minor shows that the Taurus range forms a rampart behind Cilicia and Pamphylia, and walls off the open coastline, with its Greek ports and cosmopolitan cities, from the central Asia Minor plateau. Pisidia is a mountainous district, some 120 m. long by 50 wide, at the western end of this upland chain, forming a hinterland to Pamphylia. The nature of the terrain, where the Taurus breaks into a tangle of ridges and valleys, made it the natural home of independent and predatory mountain tribesmen, who resisted successfully the attempts of the Persians, during their occupancy of Asia Minor, to subdue them, and equally defied the Persians’ Hel. successors. They professed submission to Alexander, but it could have been little more than in name. To establish some form of control over the highland tribes, the Seleucid kings founded Antioch (called Pisidian Antioch [Acts 13:14] to distinguish it from the royal capital of Syria, and from the Phrygian Antioch on the Maeander). For similar reasons of security, Amyntas of Galatia strengthened Antioch toward the end of his reign (26/25 b.c.), and established a system of strong points linked with military roads in the area. Paul’s reference to “danger from robbers” (2 Cor 11:26) in his list of tribulations, could well refer to the continued insecurity of the mountain roads of the region even after Antioch had become a bastion of the empire’s military power in Asia. Paul traversed the area twice. Amyntas had acquired the Pisidian highlands as part of the kingdom of Galatia assigned to him by Antony in 38 b.c., and it was in the course of his campaign against the mountain tribesmen that the king was killed.

Sulpicius Quirinius, famous in connection with the Lukan census in Pal. was commissioned by Augustus to establish order in the area. In the course of his systematic organization of the Rom. frontiers a difficult and illdocumented process that occupied fully twenty significant years of his principate, Augustus gave considerable attention to the pacification of the perennially rebellious mountaineers who formed islands and enclaves in his frontier system. Drusus and Tiberius sought to tame the Alpine clans N of Italy and Quirinius undertook the same laborious task in Pisidia. He seems to have established some sort of peace and his subsequent organization incorporated the mountain region in the province of Galatia.

In a.d. 74 Vespasian attached a considerable part of Pisidia to the province of Pamphylia, where no large military force was stationed. The reorganization might suggest that by this time the slow pressure of the Rom. peace had tamed the lawless natives. In the 2nd cent., numerous market towns sprang up, but there is no evidence of Christian penetration of the wild hill country before the time of Constantine, and the conversion, if the term may be used, of the empire to Christianity. Paul’s visits were urban, and the political and military bastion of Pisidian Antioch on its high plateau and in the midst of a great road system was typical of Pauline strategy.