RHODA cP63.4, e., Rose), a servant-maid mentioned in Acts xii. 13.
RHODES CP600s), an island in the Mediterra nean, near the coast of Asia Minor, celebrated from the remotest antiquity as the seat of com merce, navigation, literature, and the arts, famous during the middle a,ges as the residence of the knights of St. John, but now reduced to a state of abject poverty by the devastations of war and the tyranny and rapacity of its Turkish rulers. It is of a triangular form, about forty-four leagues in circumference, twenty leagues long from north to south, and about six broad. In the centre is a lofty mountain named Artemira, which commands a view of the whole island ; of the elevated coast of Carmania on the north ; the Archipelago, studded with numerous islands, on the north-west ; Mount Ida, veiled in clouds, on the south-west ; and the wide expanse of waters that wash the shores of Africa on the south and south-east. It was famed in ancient times, and is still celebrated, for its de lightful climate and the fertility of its soil. The gardens are filled with delicious fruit, every gale is scented with the most powerful fragrance wafted from the groves of orange and citron trees, and the numberless aromatic herbs exhale such a profusion of the richest odours, that the whole atmosphere seems impregnated with spicy perfume. It is well watered by the river Camlura, and numerous smaller streams and rivulets that spring from the shady sides of Mount Artemira. It contains two cities—Rhodes, the capital, inhabited chiefly by Turks, and a small number of Jews ; and the ancient Lindus, now reduced to a hamlet, peopled by Greeks, who are almost all engaged in com rnerce. Besides these, there are five villages occu
pied by Turks and a small number of Jews ; and five towns and forty-one villages inhabited by Greeks. The whole population was estimated by Savery at 36,500 ; but Turner, a later traveller, estimates them only at 20,030, of whom 14,000 were Greeks and 6000 Turks, with a small mix ture of Jews residing chiefly in the capital.
St Paul appears to have visited Rhodes while on his journey to Jerusalem, /tn. 58 (Acts xxi. r). It was then under the power of the Romans, under whom, however, it enjoyed a considerable measure of independence.
The Sept. translators place the Rhodians among the children of Javan (Gen. x. 4), and in this they are followed by Eusebius, Jerome, and Isidore ; but Bochart maintains that the Rhodians are too modern to have been planted there by any im mediate son of Javan, and considers that Moses rather intended the Gauls on the Mediterranean towards the mouth of the Rhone, near Marseilles, where there was a district called Rhodanusia, and a city of the same name. They also render Ezek. xxvii. 15, children of the Rhodians,' instead of, as in the Hebrew, children of Dedan.' Calmet considers it probable that here they read children of Redan or Rodan,' but that in Gen. x. 4 they read ` Dedan,' as in the Hebrew. (Ross, Reisen auf d. Griech. Inseln, Coronelli, landi Rodi Geografica ; Clarke's Travels ; Turner's journal; Saubert's Reise ins illorg-enl.)—G. M. B.