The sacred historian calls the inhabitants fidp papot, barbarians :' — the barbarous people showed us no small kindness.' This is far from implying that they were savages or uncivilized men : it merely intimates that they were not of Greek or Roman origin. This description applies to the ancient inhabitants of Malta most accu rately ; and as it could not apply to the inhabitants of Melida, who were Greeks, this is another argu ment to show that not Melida but Malta is the Melita of Scripture.
The island of Malta lies in the Mediterranean, about sixty miles south from Cape Passaro in Sicily. It is sixty miles in circumference, twenty in length, and twelve in breadth. Near it, on the west, is a smaller island, called Gozo, about thirty miles in circumference. Malta has no mountains or high hills, and makes no figure from the sea. It is naturally a barren rock, but has been made in parts abundantly fertile by the industry and toil of man. The island was first colonized by the Phoenicians, from whom it was taken by the Greek colonists in Sicily about B.C. 736 ; but the Cartha ginians began to dispute its possession about B.C. 528, and eventually became entire masters of it. From their hands it passed into those of the Romans, B.C. 242, who treated the inhabitants well, making Melita a municipium, and allowing the people to be governed by their own laws. The government was administered by a proprietor, who depended upon the prxtor of Sicily ; and this office appears to have been held by Publius when Paul was on the island (Acts xxviii. 7). On the division of the Roman empire, Melita belonged to the western portion ; but having, in A.D. 553, been recovered from the Vandals by Belisarius, it was afterwards attached to the empire of the East. About the end of the gth century, the island was taken from the Greeks by the Arabs, who made it a dependency upon Sicily, which was also in their possession. The Arabs have left the impress of their aspect, language, and many of their cus toms, upon the present inhabitants, whose dialect is to this day perfectly intelligible to the Arabians, and to the Moors of Africa. Malta was taken
from the Arabs by the Normans in A. D. rogo, and afterwards underwent other changes till A. D. 1530, when Charles V., who had annexed it to his empire, transferred it to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, whom the Turks had recently dis possessed of Rhodes. Under the knights it became a flourishing state, and was the scene of their greatest glory and most signal exploits. The institution having become unsuited to modern times, the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, commonly called Knights of Malta, gradually fell into decay, and the island was surrendered to the French under Buonaparte when on his way to Egypt in 1798. From them it was retaken by the English with the concurrence and assistance of the natives ; and it was to have been restored to the Knights of Malta by the stipulations of the treaty of Amiens ; but as no sufficient security for the independence of the order (composed mostly of Frenchmen) could be obtained, the English retained it in their hands ; which necessary infraction of the treaty was the ostensible ground of the war which only ended with the battle of Waterloo. The island is still in the hands of the English, who have lately remodelled the government to meet the wishes of the numerous inhabitants. It has lately become the actual seat of an Anglican bishopric, which, however, takes its title from Gibraltar, out of deference to the existing Catholic bishopric of Malta — a deference not paid to the Oriental churches in recently establishing the Anglican bishopric of Jerusalem. F. Wandalin, Dissert. de Melita Pauli, Havn. 1707 ; P. Carlo, Origins della Fede in Malta, Milan 1759 ; Ciantar, Critica de' Critici Moderni sul Controverso Nalifragio di San Paolo, Venez. 1763 ; Boisge]in, History of Malta, 1804; and especially Smith On the Shipwreck of St. Paul.—J. K.